


Seeking Rin

by Killaurey



Category: Naruto
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-20
Updated: 2017-12-06
Packaged: 2017-12-27 02:30:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 16
Words: 69,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/973227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Killaurey/pseuds/Killaurey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Sakura, in a relationship with Kakashi, finds out about Rin, she makes a choice that's hard on them both. Even worse, there's a mysterious illness cropping up in Konoha that even Tsunade can't heal. And what does Ino have to do with it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Tremolo

* * *

There are freckles on Kakashi's back. 

She hadn't expected that. There's not many and the scars outnumber them by far, but Sakura likes the freckles that dot his skin in unexpected places. They make him human and she thinks that she can stand sleeping-dating- _loving_ him, when he's human. She watches his back and doesn't touch. He'll wake if she does and he's tired.

And she worries. 

This-- them, it's new. She's never spent the night in his apartment before and it's a lonely place, for all that she's lying beside all the company she ought to need.

Sakura studies his back like she used to study for her exams. It's a very human back, she thinks approvingly. The shoulders are too broad for his frame and he's too thin for all that he's well-muscled. Scars mar his skin and her fingers itch to touch them. The freckles are a light rain in the midst of a war zone and she thinks, knows, that his freckles are her favourite part of his back.

When he's asleep, at least.

He shifts and she watches as he turns his head. He's still asleep, but he's dreaming a nightmare, she thinks from the tension in his body. He tosses and turns, rolling over onto her with a murmur she barely hears. 

"Rin…"

Then his arms tighten around her and Sakura is left staring up at the ceiling entirely unsure what to think.

When he wakes her up four hours later, because she’s got the earliest shift possible at the hospital and can’t stay for breakfast, she almost thinks it was a dream and files it away under unimportant and goes about her new life, of being with Kakashi.

And ignores the small, traitorous part of her that wonders who Rin is and why Kakashi is dreaming of her. 

Jealousy is an ugly trait, she tells herself, and slams the door on those thoughts.

* * *

A week later and Sakura is at the grocery store, buying eggs and rice and a tub of ice cream that is triple chocolate and the death of any diet, when she realizes that she's being stared at and not solely because she's in front of the hair products and unable to make up her mind. 

When she turns to tell them off for staring, she's surprised that it's Yuuhi Kurenai, Hinata-chan's old sensei. "Yuuhi-san," she greets politely, reigning in her temper around the older, more beautiful, more _deadly_ woman. "This is a surprise."

The twin questions _what are you doing here?_ and _why are you staring at me?_ are left unspoken, but present. Yuuhi's eyes are cool, evaluating and completely incongruous in the grocery store. The other woman holds a basket, much like she does. Sakura can guess she's shopping, which is the answer to one question, but not the other.

"Well," Yuuhi-san says, after a moment stretches long enough that Sakura is gritting her teeth. "At least you don't look like her." There's an air of censure about her words nonetheless.

Sakura gapes, not sure what to say to that. Who is 'her'? Why is it a good thing that she does not look like 'her'? 

She remembers, suddenly, what she's done a good job at forgetting about-- does 'her' mean _Rin_? 

Yuuhi-san doesn't give her a chance to ask and turns, disappearing into the next aisle and by the time Sakura manages to collect herself and look, the other woman is long gone.

She's left with melting ice cream and a question she didn't think, didn't _know_ , needed to be asked.

* * *

Asking Kakashi straight out, when it's another girl and he was murmuring her name while asleep seems like a poor tactical manoeuvre. Sakura's not the best at dealing with men, but she wants to know more before she goes off on a rant at him. Especially when the sex they're having is really, really good and she doesn't want to mess this up.

So she enlists Ino and bribes her with all the very dirtiest details about her relationship with Kakashi. Ino, old friend, old rival, old shoulder to lean on rises to the challenge. Who is this 'Rin' connected to Kakashi?

"I'll see what I can find," Ino says, with a grin and an impish tap to her temple. It's Ino at her most dangerous: sparkling eyes, brilliant smile, and good humour in every line of her body. As a child, Ino had given away all her thoughts with every movement, now all that can be seen is that she appears to be in a good mood. Ino has always over compensated. She's angry and she _glows_ with good cheer. "Whether it's written down or not."

Sakura hopes that this Rin isn't Kakashi's other, current lover. For one, she'd have to kill him.

For another, Ino would kill him first. No apologies, no explanations. At twenty-two, Ino has only gotten more vicious in the defense of her friends.

Sakura hopes she hasn't made a mistake in asking Ino to figure this out.

* * *

"--a medical _kink_?"

"--unhealthy," a man is saying as Sakura walks by him. She notes that he's shinobi and that he's talking to a friend, another shinobi, and that both of them look vaguely familiar. That's not surprising. Most shinobi look vaguely familiar to her thanks to her work at the hospital. More suspicious are the words and their appraising glances.

Sakura vows to beat the crap out of them if they start anything with her involving the words 'medical' and 'kink' in the same sentence. Then she walks on and forgets about them. There's a patient in another room waiting for her.

But she can feel their eyes follow her and she wonders why before realizing that she probably, really, doesn't want to know.

* * *

She sees them again, a few days later, while waiting for Ino at their favourite bar. Hinata might show, Tenten won't-- she's out on a mission. Her eyes sweep the room and she orders a drink.

A man she doesn't know tries to pay for it. She lets him, then lets him down. 'I've got a boyfriend' isn't effective. 'I'm a Jounin' doesn't work either and she's getting mad and _this close_ to starting a fight when the two who'd talked about medics and their kinks crack their knuckles threateningly from behind the persistent jackass.

They're a lot more effective than she at getting rid of them. It's for the best, she thinks, because she would have gotten herself kicked from the bar over it and what would Ino say?

"Thank you," she says politely, when her unlikely heroes walk back in. One of them has shoulder length hair and has a senbon in his mouth, the other has a scar across his face that she judges as a wound that healed out in the field. They're cute enough, but she's taken.

They don't ask for her number or anything, so she buys them a drink. It's only right. 

"You waiting for anyone?" the one with the senbon asks, with a glance at her slinky dress.

She crosses her legs primly. "I'm meeting a friend."

They don't like that answer and she's not quite sure why. Before they can say anything, Ino comes in, tugging Hinata through the door and both of them are laughing. Sakura grins as she waves them over and the two shinobi by her side relax.

Sakura endures Ino flinging her arms around her as soon as she gets close enough and greets Hinata. The next time she pays attention to where the shinobi went, she spots them in the far corner and puts them out of her mind.

The girls come first tonight. 

Only later, as she's stretched out on Ino's couch, Ino asleep on the floor and Hinata having gone for a glass of water, Sakura remembers that the two shinobi are friends of Kakashi's. She hiccoughs with laughter that wakes Ino up and brings Hinata back into the room. She shakes, tears of mirth running down her face, and everything made funnier by more than a few drinks.

It's just strange, she thinks, to be treated like she's going to break Kakashi's heart. It's sweet, that his friends care enough to worry.

But she's pretty sure that, of the two of them, he's more likely to break her heart.

* * *

Kakashi doesn't cook. 

He doesn't do dinner and he doesn't do lunch. Sakura hasn't been surprised by that, but the first time she stays over-night _and_ doesn't have shift at the hospital at the crack of dawn, she's surprised to find that, apparently, Kakashi does breakfast.

He has her sit at the small table and she does, too bemused to do anything else, as he sets out three kinds of jam on the table. There's honey and milk and sugar already there and she knows they weren't set out the night before. He's done this. He's got his back turned to her and if Sakura wanted she could spend the time admiring his backside for he's only wearing the loose pants of his Jounin uniform. She does a bit. It's a very nice view.

She spends her time watching him, but it's more to figure out the mystery than anything else. He's making pancakes and sausage and eggs and toast and she isn't sure how to tell him that her idea of breakfast is a piece of toast, barely buttered, and then a glass of juice if, and only if, the toast hasn't made her nauseous. 

There's fruit on the table too. Apples and grapes and oranges. She feels like she's stepped into an alternate dimension.

When he sets her plate down on the table, there's far too much food for her-- a pancake, three sausages, a slice of toast, and two eggs. He's got more on his. Sakura swallows as her stomach threatens to turn itself inside out at the idea of eating everything on hers.

He's smiling though, his shoulders relaxed and he's entirely at ease. It's rare for him to be so happy and she's loathe to do anything to ruin that.

"Thanks," she finds herself saying and, more peculiarly, meaning it as she drizzles a tiny bit of syrup on her pancake. "This looks delicious."

It is.

And Sakura thinks her upset stomach is a small price to pay for the smile and kiss he bestows on her before taking her dishes at the end of it as he shoos her off to work and out the door before she can offer to wash the dishes for him. 

She blinks at the door to his apartment for a long moment before beginning the walk to the hospital. Sakura isn't sure what to make of his venture into domesticity, but she figures that since he did breakfast that she's got to think of something to do for supper.

He only ever does breakfast.

* * *

"I found her!" Ino carols, bursting through the doors of the staff room at the hospital. 

Sakura looks up from where she'd been rubbing her temples. She's just come from a six hour surgery and she's tired, her chakra depleted, and it takes her a long few minutes to figure out who Ino could have found.

In the meantime, Ino places her hands to either side of Sakura's head and, with a glow that's as familiar to Sakura as her name, Ino gets rid of the headache that had been pounding. 

"Ino," Sakura says, as her friend feeds energy into her. "You shouldn't be doing that. What if you get called out on a mission?"

Ino shrugs, looking entirely unconcerned. "I'm on sick leave. There's time enough for me to rest."

Sick leave? Sakura looks her over, dredging up the energy to get out of her chair. Ino simply moves with her, still feeding energy. She's better at this aspect than Sakura is, for all that they both know Sakura is the better medic-nin. Sakura privately thinks that the reason Ino is good at sharing her energy is because she shares all the time when it comes to her love and her opinions. 

"What's wrong with you?" Sakura asks, as her own tests pull up a few irregularities in Ino's blood. 

Ino makes a face as she drops her hands. "It's not very interesting compared to what I came to see you for--,"

Sakura _glares_.

"Oh fine, whatever. I keep bleeding, when I'm cut," Ino says, like it's no big deal. "My blood isn't able to coagulate. Hokage-sama is with Shizune-sensei doing tests now to figure out why my fibrin isn't generating properly."

"You've never had problems before," Sakura says, frowning. As far as reasons to be on sick leave go, it's one that doesn't leave her freaking out, but it's not good either. There's so many ways a ninja can get hurt-- but there's a number of ways to bleed in the village as well. "Did you get hit with anything?"

"I don't think so?" Ino shrugs. "I could be wrong, of course, but as long as Hokage-sama can figure out how to fix it, it'll work out." The light words belie the uneasy look Ino gives the door. 

Sakura can feel her headache starting again. She sits down and this time Ino sits next to her. "You were saying you found her?" Sakura prompts. She's worried about Ino but if her friend is being looked after by two of Sakura's teachers (and one of her own) then she can't think of anything else to do, except be a friend.

Ino is all smiles at the change of subject; she's never liked talking about herself for all that she'll talk about any other subject under the sun. "Rin," she says, "it took me a while but I found her. Do you still want to know? I can guarantee that she's not sleeping with him if that's all you needed to have confirmed."

Sakura bites her lip. Truly, that was the most important thing to know. It's a comfort to have Ino confirm that he wasn't cheating on her-- if Ino said it was true, then it was. "He wouldn't like me prying."

Kakashi is a very private person, she knows that.

"How would he find out?" Ino says, leaning back. "And if he does, he's going to go after me first."

"I don't want him to do that either!" Sakura snaps, bristling. "And he shouldn't. I was the one that asked you to."

"I probably would have anyway," Ino said, with a grin that's a bit wicked, a bit dangerous, and Sakura thinks she's seeing shades of what wearing the scarlet spiral has changed in her friend. "If you think I wouldn't have checked out any guy you liked for more than a quick tumble…"

Ino doesn't need to finish her sentence. "Stupid, right." Sakura sighs and figures that if she's in for a senbon, she might as well be in for a kunai. "What did you find out about her then?"

"She's dead." Ino stretches and Sakura sees the bandages on her arm from blood having been drawn. "Rin, I mean. She died a few weeks after the Kyuubi attacked, due to chakra poisoning. Slow death, painful. She was a medic-nin, a prodigy, like you that way. She was way nicer though-- everyone who remembers her, loves her."

Sakura arches an eyebrow. "Are you saying I'm not loveable?"

"You're loveable," Ino says, with a laugh. "Like a porcupine. Anyway--probably the most important thing, she was Kakashi's last living teammate. Uchiha Obito died back in the war against Iwa--it's his eye that Kakashi has implanted actually--and the Yondaime died in halting the Kyuubi’s attack." Ino twirls a bit of hair around one finger. "Kakashi joined ANBU two days after she died. Everyone expected he did it to die faster while serving his village."

"But he didn't." The words are ashen in her voice. "And he-- loved her, I guess?"

Ino just shrugs. "I think so," she says, which means that Ino is sure, but that she doesn't have enough proof to conclusively declare so. "Some say just as a teammate, but they were close." Ino studies her and Sakura can feel herself flushing under the scrutiny. "Does it matter? She died the year we were born. Are you going to compete with a dead woman?"

The question unnerves her.

Hours and hours later, as she's walking home in the twilight, she thinks about Ino's question again. Was she? Was _he?_

Her answer is the same one she gave Ino back in the staffroom. "I don't know," Sakura murmurs, leaning against the railing of the bridge. "I don't know."

How could anyone compete against that?

* * *

Three days later and a lot of chocolate and a whole lot of being both glad and guilty that Kakashi is away on a mission, Sakura decides that she can't compete against Rin. Not for Kakashi's affections, not for anyone's approval, not for anything. It's not like Ino and her, that's a different sort of competition entirely, especially these days.

She sits in her tiny apartment, a blanket around her shoulders, and ostensibly, she's watching one of her favourite soaps. She's paying just enough attention to it to be able to discuss it with Ino and Hinata the next time she sees them, but it's not holding her attention the way it normally does.

It's depressing to think that if there is a competition, then she's already lost.

And, she admits, that if there is one, this is one that she doesn't want a part in. Why should she? Sakura is pretty sure that she loves Kakashi if the horrible twisting feeling in her stomach at the thought of leaving him is any indication and the way that she finds it harder to sleep when he's out of the village.

Sakura toys with her hair, which has been growing longer and she doesn't know, hasn't decided if she wants to cut it yet, and wonders what it is about her that always has her fall in love with the wrong person.

First Sasuke, who she still thinks of now and then with a pang. It wasn't her fault, she knows, and she had said everything she could to keep him with her. But-- part of her still wonders why she wasn't good enough.

And now, once again, she's not going to be good enough to compete against the dead. 

Kakashi's loved ones died different deaths than Sasuke's, and they've grown past it and around it and through it differently, but it doesn't change the fact that dead is dead.

Or the fact that once more, she's in the middle of it.

Sakura's lips firm. She's not going to cry this time, that much she's grown past. Her mind made up, she gets off the couch and stumbles a little on her way to the kitchen table that she hasn't been using lately.

This isn't fair to Kakashi, she knows, but it's the only thing she can do. If she talks to him, she'll let herself be swayed. Even his friends were concerned about this exact matter because she's like Rin, in a way.

A replacement.

Her eyes fill despite her best efforts and she swallows hard because, yes, she's going to be using this table a whole lot more now. It's the right decision though. Even if it feels a hundred times worse than Sasuke leaving had been. 

_Maybe that's what it means to be grown up,_ she thinks, reaching for a pen and a bit of stationary that Hinata had given her a few months ago. _Everything hurts more because you understand it more._

And this time, instead of the boy leaving her, she's leaving the man. It takes her five hours to pen a three line note and then, when she's finally got a copy that isn't tear-stained past the reading of it, Sakura calls Ino and asks her to come over in an hour.

Ino doesn't mention the way Sakura is crying as she talks on the phone. For that, Sakura thinks, as she hangs up and gets to her feet, she loves Ino all over again. 

It's the worst journey of her life to get from her apartment to Kakashi's. She's got a key to his door, to his chakra seals, and she uses that to let herself in. The apartment is quiet and empty without him and she feels the same sense of loneliness that she always does when in his place. 

But there's little dabs of colour here and there. That's new and is her work.The spoon rest that she slipped into his kitchen lies on the stove, a bright splash of yellow flowers in the cold room. The oven mitts she bought him hang on the wall. Red and green with tomato vines on them. So far she's only bought him things for the kitchen. When he cooks breakfast, it makes her feel warm to think of him using the things she's placed in here.

Sakura knows she could stand here for hours and not get anything accomplished. But Ino will be waiting for her and Sakura knows, with the confidence of someone who has known her friend for forever, that Ino will come looking for her if she doesn't show up, after that phone call. 

With trembling fingers she sets down the note explaining why she can't be here, why they can't do this any more. And, with another moment of agonizing hesitation, Sakura also sets down the spatula she'd seen last week and bough for him. It's a pale green that looks nice with the yellow of the spoon rest. Her eyes blur as she turns away. 

It's another fifteen minutes before she can compose herself enough to reset Kakashi's seals and locks to secure his apartment. 

When she gets home, back to her place, and feeling desperately lonely at the thought of being there, Ino is waiting with ice cream. But more important than the ice cream is the hug.

Sakura collapses against Ino, trusting that her oldest, truest friend will take care of her, and cries her heart out.

She can't compete, so she can't stay. It was the right decision.

But it hurts so bad.

* * *

It's two weeks before Kakashi gets back from his mission and Sakura is certain that they have been the longest weeks in existence. She's been quiet and pale and has cried eight times over him and sniffled at least thirty more and Ino has all but moved in for the duration of this.

She's grateful for that and part of her loathes the fact that even still, at her age, she needs someone to support her as much as she does. Ino never says a word about how it's a pain though and Sakura can't bring herself to ask Ino to leave.

The only reason she finds out that Kakashi is back is because the Chuunin who take the mission reports tell her. She smiles weakly, because clearly they think it's a good thing to tell her, and excuses herself as quickly as is polite. 

She wants to be sick. 

The Chuunin told her because they know that Sakura likes to keep an eye on the people she loves. But the Chuunin don't know that Kakashi will be going home to an empty apartment with a note breaking it off.

She imagines him getting in, tired and dirty, (though in her imagination she hopes he isn't injured at all-- he has a tendency to hide his injuries and she won't be there to heal them this time), and yet in good humour as he looks around and tries to spot what she's left for him. It won't be hard to find, just sitting out on the table, which will seem a little odd that she hasn't put it in it's place.

And she can imagine him spotting her note, picking it up to read, and going still in that dangerous, empty way that only a shinobi can.

Sakura gets through the rest of her shift with difficulty and, rather than head home, she disappears into one of the parks. If he comes looking for her, she doesn't want to be found. Not yet. 

Not until she's sure her resolve won't crumble when he asks her why.

* * *

When she heads home, it's past three in the morning, and Ino is wide, _wide_ awake and writing furiously in what has to be a diary. Sakura pauses in the doorway, smiling a little in spite of the way her eyes burn, and has to ask, "I thought you grew out of those years ago?"

Ino looks up, all smug superiority. "This," she declares, "isn't a diary. I know you're thinking it."

Sakura doesn't bother to ask if Ino is talking literally or not-- either option is possible with her -- and shuts the door behind her. "What is it then? Because that looks a lot like a diary to me."

"It's a journal," Ino says loftily, then adds, "It's for us."

"Us?" Sakura sits down next to Ino on the couch and pulls her legs up under her. "How can a _diary_ be for _us_?"

"I write in it," Ino replies brightly, with only a wrinkle of her nose to indicate she's noticed that Sakura hasn't changed her terminology for the small book, "and then you get the journal until you've replied or written whatever, and then you give it back to me." Ino pauses for a moment. "But use ink that's not purple. That colour is mine."

Sakura gives Ino a long look. "That is _so_ Academy of you."

"Yeah," Ino admits, and offers Sakura the journal and a pen. Pink, she notes. Academy colours to go with an Academy idea. "But are you going to write in it?"

"You're not telling anyone about this," she says, and takes the journal. And the pen. Why not? She likes pink.

She likes writing in the journal too, as three turns to four, and Ino makes popcorn and turns on an old horror movie to make pithy comments at. It's a comforting, soothing, thing to do. And it gives her a reason to not ask Ino why she's absolutely livid underneath the cheer.

Sakura suspects that it has something to do with Kakashi and doesn't want to know what Ino said, or what _he_ said, when he showed up on her doorstep.

She wonders if that makes her a coward. 

"You're not writing," Ino sings, leaning over to set the popcorn beside Sakura. "You can do better than that."

There's a hundred million things that Ino means in those words and Sakura finds herself smiling slightly. She doesn't believe it, not deep in her heart, not right now, because she's too busy bleeding to death emotionally to really _trust_ that, but it's nice to hear. 

And nicer to realize that Ino means it.

"I know," Sakura says, answering both the overt and the covert meanings in Ino's words all at once, just the way she was taught to in the Academy, and puts a few more words down in the diary. _I love you._ It's true. "I know."

In her head, she knows she does. That she deserves more than to be a replacement for someone who died years and years ago. Yet a small part of her, her heart, wistfully thinks that it wasn't so bad a relationship, being Rin's replacement for a little while. Not healthy, no, but it had been nice while it lasted. Maybe she'll put that down. It's a secret, but their journal is _their_ secret. Maybe it's safe to share that much.

"Good," Ino says, and lobs a bit of popcorn her way. 

Sakura eats it, because it's better than letting it go to waste, despite the way it tastes like ashes to her, and keeps writing. Ino seems content with that, and Sakura wishes that everyone she knows were made so easily content. She writes that down too and wonders what Ino will make of it. Of any of it.

And she hopes Ino doesn't mind if Sakura cries over it, just a bit, the pages getting smudged long after Ino has fallen asleep and even the credits on the movie have ended.

She's tired of crying. She just wants to--move on. 

Sakura writes that down too.

* * *


	2. Fermata

* * *

Sunlight pours through the windows of the sterile hospital room. The curtains shiver in the soft breeze and Kakashi thinks that, well, he's been in the hospital for worse over the years. _Optimism at its finest_ , he mocks himself, and refocuses on Tsunade. 

He doesn't know what he's in the hospital for. Kakashi mulls over that as Tsunade prods his shoulder with cool, competent and utterly business-like fingers. Kakashi is fairly certain that he's never been in the hospital before without knowing why, but... a poor shinobi is one who cannot adapt, he tells himself, and waits stoically. 

"Alright," Tsunade says, in the tones of relief, as she re-bandages the minor scrape he sustained out in the field. "Good, you're clean."

Kakashi pulls down his sleeve, a little put out at the indignity of it all, and considers the frown lines on his Hokage's face. "Has there been a problem?" he asks. "A new bio-weapon?" It's the only thing he can think of to explain how, upon reaching Konoha and dropping off his report, he, along with the rest of his team, were ordered to attend upon their Hokage at the hospital.

She studies him and he wonders if she sees the boy she knew once upon a time, or if she sees who he is now. He's never been able to tell with her. "We don't know," she says finally, opting, he notes, for a bit of honesty. "It could be nothing, but..."

He nods. "Are all teams--?"

"Just the ones sent south-west," she replies. "For now. We've got four shinobi pulled from duty due to inexplicable irregularities in routine post-mission examinations." Her brown eyes are fierce. "You're not to repeat that, Hatake. Is that understood?"

"Understood," he says and means it. He might (and does) enjoy gossip as much as the next shinobi, but when the Hokage tells you to shut up, you shut up. "Is there anything I should keep an eye on out in the field?"

Unspoken is the assumption that she'll be sending him out that way. Kakashi can't see why she wouldn't when he's got experience, years, and skill to back him up. Why _wouldn't_ she send him out? That's justifiable arrogance, though he won't say that. 

A flicker of a smile touches Tsunade's lips. "Don't get hurt," she says, "and watch out for anything that feels like a bug bite or a mosquito-- it might not appear to be an attack at all. Half the cases we've discovered so far encountered no enemy resistance out in the field."

He leans against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest. "What level were the teams?" 

Kakashi knows better than to ask for names as he leans against the hospital bed. She wouldn't give them to him and he doesn't expect her to. Knowing that four of their shinobi are off active duty temporarily means nothing: there's always more than that off-duty due to various injuries and vacation time and he's got no doubt they've been cautioned on what to say as well.

Tsunade's lips twist grimly. "Two Jounin teams, one Chuunin, and one Genin team. The Genin team saw combat, as did one of the Jounin teams."

His brow furrows. "No consistent patterns as of yet?"

She shakes her head. "None. Not even in how far they were from Konoha." The flash of her eyes says that she doesn't like this.

Kakashi can't blame her: it doesn't sound good to him either and he's not the one who has to look after every shinobi in the village. He doesn't want her job. "If it's an enemy," he says, "then there's got to be some sort of pattern. What's the possibility that it's a naturally occurring mutation of a virus? Or something that really is being spread by the wildlife?"

"It could be," Tsunade allows, though he can tell that she doesn't like that idea. He wonders what details she's not sharing with him. If added together they paint a grimmer picture than the one she's given him. (Which is grim enough, he thinks.) "Just keep an eye out for anything out of the ordinary and report your findings directly to me."

"Not to Sakura?" he questions, as all things considered, talking to Sakura is less of a hassle. And even if the news is bad, she tends to be happy to see him. He can't say the same for his Hokage.

"No," she says, a funny look in her eyes. "To me." She steps back, dusts her hands off, and nods as she surveys him. He wonders what she's thinking about. 

"Go home," Tsunade says. "Eat. Sleep. Your energy levels need to be replenished. Report to me in three days and I'll have your next mission for you."

Three days isn't much time but while he'd like more time to spend with Sakura, he understands. The village comes first as a whole over its individuals and with four of their number already out of commission, this is something that needs to be looked into.

Kakashi nods his head in acceptance. 

He goes.

* * *

If asked, Kakashi would say that he doesn't believe in superstitions and that they're for small-minded shinobi and children alone.

This does not stop him from frowning thoughtfully, though not enough for it to show through his mask, as he steps out of the hospital, hands stuffed into his pockets, shoulders falling into their usual slouch. It's just that, with what Tsunade told him, he can't help but feel there's something he ought to remember. It niggles at the back of his mind, like a whisper heard once and then forgotten.

Which doesn't make sense. There is no reason, he tells himself, to feel like a ghost has trailed icy fingers down his spine in a cryptic reminder. Not at the hospital: there's no one there who'd haunt him, even if they existed. There's nothing that happened at the hospital to stalk him like a shadow of a ghost. 

He shakes his head in an attempt to shake it off and tells himself to quit being ridiculous. There's plenty to worry about without giving heed to ghosts (which he doesn't believe in) and things he doesn't remember (but which nags at him anyway). 

He stops by the mission center to ascertain they don't need him for anything else--Tsunade having carted him and his team off without so much as a by your leave--and inquires after Sakura, ignoring the way the some of the Chuunin titter with amusement. He knows all the gossip; the famous Copy-Nin, fallen to love at last.

For the most part, the Chuunin here are too young to know that this love is the second love he's fallen to. He is disinclined to tell them. The Chuunin tells him that she's working at the hospital (he wonders how they missed each other there) and won't be off until late, but that she's got the day off tomorrow. This is followed by an impudent wink that he ignores. It's not worth encouraging them.

Tomorrow, he thinks, will be soon enough. He saunters out of the building, hands in his pockets, one of them fingering a familiar orange book, though he doesn't pull it out, and idly makes his way through the village. Food, he thinks. Sleep. Just what his Hokage ordered.

And then he'll see Sakura--he knows she's safe--after, later. In his current state, if he sees her, she'll only fuss and bother and while he (secretly) doesn't mind that, there's really no need for it this time and he doesn't like the idea of being fussed over in public.

He has to keep _some_ reputation after all. Even if love is determined to make a fool of himself.

All is well, except for the inexplicable unease that has settled in his gut and the unsettling news weighing on his mind and so Kakashi ignores both the feeling and the news and makes a quick stop at a takeaway place before continuing on his way home.

The walk unnerves him more than the lingering sensation (reminder?) of something being wrong, and he finds himself palming a kunai as he makes his way up his stairs. Is he getting paranoid in his old age? He can't decide if he hopes that's true or not. Paranoia keeps old and young ninja alike alive. That's nothing to be scoffed at.

Getting his apartment unlocked is the matter of seconds and he registers with a smile that Sakura had been in his place at least once. She always sets the locks just slightly differently than he does. 

Kakashi knows he could tell her how to set them exactly the way they're meant to be set, but he doesn't want to. He likes being able to know-- not out of a sense of paranoia, though he's got plenty of that, but because it's a warm thing, to know that she's comfortable enough with him to enter his apartment alone, when he's not around.

Feeling slightly more at ease, he pushes the door open and stops.

He is the first to admit that his nose is not as sharp as an Inuzuka's or any of his dogs. It does not have to be, to be able to scent the distress in the air. Sakura's distress: days old but still strong.

If he were superstitious he would attribute his unease to this. Because he likes to think he's not, Kakashi dismisses that idea. There's no way he could have known something was wrong at his apartment from the moment he'd left the Hokage's presence. That's ridiculous. The fact that some few of his thoughts think it isn't… well, he ignores that. 

Kakashi steps inside his apartment trying to determine what the cause of her distress had been. Of course, not even Inuzuka have noses that can scent _that_ , unless it's an injury. Being able to smell how people are feeling does not give the power to know _why_ people feel what they do. 

He'd learnt that in a series of rather painful lessons, back when he'd still been a child, in at least one sense of the word. 

The living room is the same as it always is. A forest green blanket lies folded over the couch that they like to watch TV together on. Sakura likes the comfort of the blanket and Kakashi, back when she'd first suggested a blanket, had been willing to oblige her in just about anything. He still is, but thinking that way makes him sound soppy, so he stops. The green does make the room a little friendlier, he admits, running one hand across the blanket before moving on. It's clear that she did not linger in this room.

His bedroom has been untouched in his absence. Her distress has not permeated his room and he cracks open the window to rid the room of the slightly dusty scent that always accumulates when he's away on a long mission. 

Her upset is strongest in the kitchen. While he spots the note and the spatula (pale green, he notes, and despite his worry that makes him want to smile--Sakura likes green and him together) he doesn't hurry over to it despite the powerful urge to do exactly that. If there's anything else in the kitchen, he'll miss it if he checks the most obvious evidence first. There's nothing out of place in the kitchen however, except for her despair, and he can tell that she'd been here for fair bit of time and upset, but that it had been around a week ago. 

Perhaps, he thinks, it hadn't been anything too important. Without more to go on, he tells himself that it could have been anything from a fight with a co-worker to a bad day where nothing went right to a loss against Ino in some intricate kunoichi thing he has long since ceased trying to understand. 

He'll ask her later, he decides. For all he knows the distress was strong for the day, but fleeting, and she's perfectly fine. He likes that scenario the best and steps over to the windows to open them. For a few moments, he leans in one of the windows, feeling the breeze and letting it calm him before stepping away.

Having talked himself into sense and feeling better as the distress that has lingered in the room is washed out by the open windows, which brings clean air and better spirits, Kakashi picks up the spatula Sakura has bought him and reaches for the note.

It's not a very long note, he sees. That's alright. Sakura isn't the sort to write a novel over a spatula, of all things, and he leans against the kitchen table to read it.

It's not a very long note, but he finds that it's true that the littlest things can turn your life upside down. 

Kakashi feels like he's been encased in ice, only it burns, and his chest still moves up and down, in the simple rhythm of life, and his eyes move, taking in the words that he's sure must be-- something he's mistaken about. 

They don't make sense, his mind babbles, even he begins to read it again, hoping a second pass through will make this seem less out of the blue. More understandable. Anything. 

He takes his time during the second reading, feeling the words hit him like bricks, or perhaps like kunai, as he struggles to put together what he's reading with his neat, mostly pleasant life in the village, and the fact that when he'd left, Sakura had been happy with him.

Now he's come back and she's written a note, saying that she can't be. 

She mentions Rin and that makes his blood run cold, then hot, all over again, like he's got a fever in his blood.

Some part of him that isn't drowning in shock remembers the look in his Hokage's eye when he'd clarified if he should talk to her and not to Sakura. Now he understands that look--she'd known about this.

He's grateful that she'd let him find it out on his own. It's less humiliating than being told by your leader that you've been--

Dumped.

Afterwards, he's never able to say how long he spent staring at the note that was determined to rip his life apart. He blinks and all of a sudden, it's dark outside, it's late, and if he remembers right (and of course, he does; he remembers everything about Sakura) then she's off work and has to be home by now.

Thoughts circle in his mind, futile and ceaseless in equal measures. How had she found out about Rin? Who has told her about Rin? _Why?_

White-hot anger surges through him, temporarily blinding him. This is why _he_ hadn't told her about Rin. She would take it the wrong way and she has and now she's pulling away from him without ever having given him a chance to explain.

The note crumples in his hand. She can't do this.

_She has_ , points out the cold part of him that's still glad his Hokage let him keep his dignity. He shakes his head in denial. _No._

Kakashi leaves his gone-cold supper on the table, doesn't bother with cleaning up or resetting the jutsu alarms or shutting the windows, and he's gone, making his way as fast as he can, to the place she lives, when she's not with him.

He can't lose this again.

* * *

He makes himself knock on the familiar door to her place. 

Kakashi knows where her keys are and even if he didn't, he'd have been able to get in. This is an apartment in a new building, not the ancient structure he lives in, and while it's more spacious and cleaner, his place is safer. There's holes entire squads could get through in these locks.

That would anger her, if he did it now, though he's done it before to prove he can. But now, when she's broken it off because she's not Rin (he _knows_ that, he tells himself) he thinks that her reaction would be only rage at his intrusion and Kakashi doesn't want her angry, he just wants her back.

The door opens after what feels like an age and he finds himself face-to-face with Ino. She's looking at him like he's a bit of dirt, perhaps or something that she's been trying to get off her shoe. She's in pyjamas and her hair is up in a loose ponytail and really, the most impressive thing about her is how he's almost entirely certain the balmy night has turned sub-zero from the force of her glare alone.

His anger—confusion—over Sakura rages at the sight of Ino, who isn't the one he wants to talk to, and Kakashi struggles to control it. He needs to control this. Has to. He's not some pathetic teenager with a crush. This is—

More important to him. He needs to talk to Sakura.

Ino leans in the doorway, arms crossed over her stomach, like this is a casual conversation even though it's clearly not, and arches one eyebrow at him.

He abruptly realizes that he's still clenching the spatula in one hand and feels like an idiot. It's not fair, he thinks, that she can do that with just a look. She's younger than him. Like Sakura, he reminds himself ruthlessly, and now, she's Sakura's defender. Of _course_ she's trying to make him feel like an idiot. 

Kakashi wonders, with a pang, how upset Sakura has been. He remembers that Ino has never liked him and his heart sinks. This cannot go well and Sakura has picked her defender well. Kakashi's temper pulses under his skin, in time to the beat of his heart. He wants Ino to get out of the doorway. _Now._

"Where's Sakura?" His voice is steady, low, dangerous. Underneath the upset, this pleases him: he doesn't feel any of those things right now. It's nice to know he can still lie. "I need to speak to her."

Ino has the gall to check her fingernails, inspecting them for invisible imperfections before answering. "She's busy," Ino says, with a thin smile. Her eyes are like chips of ice. "You're no one she needs to be bothered with."

"It's ten at night," he says, having checked the clock before coming over just to make sure he had the time right when it had slipped through his fingers like sand all afternoon. "She's been at work all day. Sakura _can't_ be busy. Don't lie to me." 

Ino covers her mouth with one hand, like she's hiding a giggle for a second. He resists the urge to snarl. Then her hand pulls away. There's no smile there, not even the thin one from before. "She _is_ busy," Ino tells him. "And she _doesn't_ need to be bothered with you. As for lies… perhaps you should look at yourself before accusing me. Do you even know _anything_?"

Abruptly, he remembers that she's a Yamanaka and that means minds are her playground. That she's _good_ at it. That there's no way for him to know what she's picking up from him right now.

Anger trembles the back of his mind. If she can pick that up, then there's no way she can deny that he cares for Sakura deeply. That the idea of losing her to _this_ infuriates--no, panics--him. It would be different if it wasn't this, wasn't about Rin. There's so many years between them that if she called it off for someone her own age... he likes to pretend he'd be okay with that. After all, she deserves more than an old man.

But Rin... Rin is no one's business but his own these days. How _dare_ this be made about her?

He considers shoving past Ino. Is he just wasting his time trying to reason with someone who can't stand the sight of him? Which, Kakashi reminds himself ruthlessly, is ridiculous. If he tries to get past Ino, who is waiting with an expression he doesn't care to define on her face, he _will_ have to fight. It's evident in her stance. 

He's tired, she's fresh. He's got years of experience, she can read his mind. And none of that matters, Kakashi realizes abruptly, because if he hurts Ino, Sakura _will_ be angry, and he'll have even less of a chance to explain.

Ino is only defending her friend. Possibly, likely, at Sakura's request. There's no way he can escalate this without being the one in the wrong.

That means he can't escalate it and he forces himself to breathe deeply and resist the urge to vent his rage at the kunoichi who watches him, watches him _think_ and likely knows every nuance of his thoughts.

"I want to see her," he says, when he can say it without growling. Willpower is the only thing that keeps him from shoving Ino aside and storming into the apartment. He can't tell if Sakura is there or not-- her scent is all over the place, it's her place, and if there's anywhere she can hide without him knowing, it's in her own apartment, hidden by her own presence. "I need to explain that--"

"That she's not a replacement for Rin?" Ino asks, like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. "Hmmm. Could be a hard sell when you seem to be the only one that believes _that_."

She can't mean, couldn't mean-- "Who told her about Rin?" Kakashi demands, feeling like he's been tripped into some alternate universe. One where the few people who know about her would actually talk about her, years after the fact.

Ino just looks at him, blue eyes wide and unreadable. "Who hasn't?"

He can't complain that this isn't fair--he's a Jounin of Konoha and _nothing_ is ever, has ever, been fair in his life. He feels sick at the thought that it hadn't come from Ino, with her disrespect for the privacy of other peoples' minds. That Ino wasn't the one who'd said anything _first_.

"How could I?" Ino asks, not even bothering to pretend she wasn't following along with his every thought. "I'm Sakura's age. No one _I_ hang out with knows about Rin. Don't blame this on _me_ , Hatake." 

His breath hisses out, like she's punched him in the gut, for all that she hasn't moved. Despite himself, he knows she speaks good sense. But it's easy to place the blame on her. He _wants_ to blame her. He's always held it against her, in a weird and peculiar way, that she does not like him and has given no indication as to why. He wouldn't care, except that she's Sakura's best friend and so he has.

Now the truth stares him in the face and he can't, doesn't know, if it's unjustified. 

The small part of him that's honest to a fault thinks maybe she's justified. He doesn't think he's been replacing Rin, for all that the fact that Rin and Sakura share a number of things in common that appeal to him--he thinks Rin would have liked Sakura and what's the harm in that?

Other people, Kakashi thinks, need to learn how to keep their noses out of his business.

What right had any of them to mention Rin?

"The right of friendship," Ino says. She flicks a bit of hair back over her shoulder and regards him stonily and doesn't explain that.

He feels like he's lost this battle and he's not sure how. What does friendship have to do with spilling his secrets? He's sure that there's sense, at least in Ino's mind, in what she said. 

But he can't see it. Not right now.

His eye curves into a dangerous smile that matches the one he's got under his mask. Ino looks unimpressed and not even her scent gives away unease. 

She's furious, not scared. That impresses him as much as it annoys him: this would be easier if she was a shrinking violet. But then, he thinks, she wouldn't be Sakura's best friend.

"What do you know?" he murmurs, invading her personal space. He stops moving only when the sharp prick of a kunai is pressed up under his chin. Her eyes are flinty and now there's a vague scent of unease on the air. He barely smells it, his anger is so strong he can practically taste it.

He doesn't stop talking. He can't. He needs to say this. "If they did it for friendship, they wouldn't have told her that which would have her break up with me."

He's been happy, lately.

He can't think why his friends would want to stop that. Kakashi thinks that, if Ino really was Sakura's friend, that she'd understand that.

"Sometimes, Hatake," Ino murmurs, cold death in her eyes, "you're an idiot. Why don't you go and ask _them_ before trying to intimidate me?"

Then, before he can react, she retracts the kunai, steps back, and slams the door in his face. A moment, a second, later, the hum of security jutsu go up, crackling with Ino's temper, and he steps away from the door unwillingly.

He could probably still force his way in. But that _would_ hurt Ino and Sakura _would_ be angry with him.

This is doing no one, not even him, any good.

Kakashi disappears in a swirl of leaves. There's something else he needs to look into:

Who told Sakura? And _why?_

His unfamiliar rage curls around his thoughts and purrs.

* * *


	3. Obbligato

* * *

"--and I told you," the voice is exasperated, "if you can't do this, then how're you supposed to -- yeah, that's right -- orders, remember?"

Silence hits the air for a moment and then the voice laughs softly. It is everything but friendly. "Are you kidding me? _You've_ got the worst of -- oh yeah, just remembered who you're talking to, huh? Well, I guess I can accept your apology. I _guess_. See how nice I am?"

Another silence. This one is longer, like the voice is listening intently.

"That's exactly right," the voice says, true laughter bubbling around the edges of the voice's brisk words. "It's going to be complicated but, well… yes, we laugh in the face of it, I _know_. Anyway, would you keep an eye on -- thanks, that's perfect, this is going to take some timing -- yes, and you know what to do -- listen to me, I know it's not the letter of our orders but -- yeah, she does, will you?"

Another laugh, but softer and more real than the first. "Great. See, you're getting better at this already! Must be my expert tutelage -- I've got to go. Remember what I told you."

* * *

The next morning comes creeping through her windows far too early for her taste and Sakura blinks blearily at the beam of unrepentant sunlight that crisscrosses her lap. Another beam cuts across her face and she winces away from it, rubbing at her eyes. 

With a shake of her head, she wishes for more sleep and, knowing it won't happen, gets up off the floor (which, she observes, was a more comfortable place to sleep even five years ago as compared to now--she feels like an old lady must feel, creaking her way to her feet) and stretches. 

Covering a yawn with one hand, Sakura glances at the room. The popcorn bowl lies, forgotten, on its side with only a few kernels left in it. The blanket that usually lies on top of the couch is a rumpled heap beside the coffee table and her rug is askew. She fingers her hair, winces at the tangles in it--another con to sleeping on the floor--and frowns a little. She had the _oddest_ dream. Someone had been talking to someone else about orders and who had the worst of them and subverting the same. It's almost interesting enough to push away the crushing feeling of everything else for a moment or two. 

Ino is fast asleep on the couch, curled into a ball, with her head resting on her knees. Sakura surveys her for a moment, quietly resentful that her friend is still sleeping, and then shakes it off. That's not Ino's fault. Why shouldn't Ino still be sleeping? She's not the one, Sakura reminds herself, that's had her life turned upside down.

Even worse, Sakura thinks, after all: Sakura is the one who has forced the change. Sorrow and grief stab her in equal measures as she blinks back more tears. 

Sakura picks the journal up off the floor and sets it down beside Ino, but carries the pink pen with her to the kitchen, tucking it behind one ear. In the pale sunlight, the kitchen looks warm and cheery. She's decorated it in shades of yellow and blue because that's how her mother always decorated a kitchen and it's stuck. 

She sets up the coffeemaker and glances out the window because it's better than glancing at the clock. She's got the day off so the time doesn't really matter anyway. Which, she sighs, is just another point in favour of sleeping more. It is easier, she's found, to deal with things when she's asleep.

Which, Sakura thinks with a snort, means she's not dealing with things at all. That's alright, she tells herself, if she doesn't deal with them, she's sure that Ino will make her if it goes too far. Which might be relying on Ino too much but then, Ino is the one who has been staying over just to be leaned on.

Sakura smiles faintly. She's got the best friend anyone could ask for.

The coffeemaker burbles happily behind her and Sakura pushes her hair away from her face. It's a sunny day outside--which makes sense, she chides herself, since it was the sun that woke her--and the sky is so blue that it's nearly painful to look at. Clouds, thin wispy things, scuttle across the sky. A stiff breeze aides them in that and keeps the leaves in the village shaking and twisting. It's hard to tell it's autumn, she thinks, hard to tell it's almost the middle of October. 

Sakura leans over the counter and opens up her window. The breeze is a little cool but the sun will warm that. It worries her for a moment, letting the window be open, but then she shoves that worry away. If he's a creep enough to break in through her window, she'll give him her fist and do it gladly.

And that is something she would have done even _before_ she dumped him.

Shaking her head at her thoughts--such a thing to be thinking first thing in the morning!--she runs her fingers through her hair again and then decisively makes her way towards the bathroom. She needs a shower.

Thirty minutes later, wrapped in a towel and nothing else as she leaves her bathroom, Sakura pokes her head into the kitchen and is unsurprised to see Ino sitting at the table with a coffee beside her. What does surprise her is the way that Ino looks more exhausted than she had before going to sleep. She's just about to comment on that when Ino notices her.

"Oh la la," Ino says brightly, looking up from reading what Sakura suspects is their journal. "What have I done to deserve such a view?"

Sakura tucks her towel tighter around her and rolls her eyes. "Like you haven't seen me in a towel before." She leans a little more comfortably in the doorway and has to smile a little. Saying that makes her remember the two years where they'd lived together upon becoming Chuunin. Those had been eventful years, _loud_ years, that in retrospect had been a great deal of fun. There are days when she wants to go back to them, even if that means putting up with Ino's odd hours. 

(Not that hers, these days, are any better.)

"I know _all_ your secrets," Ino says with an easy shrug. Her eyes are bright despite the circles under them. "Want a coffee?"

"You better not have drank the entire first pot," Sakura comments. "You know better than that."

Ino just shrugs. Sakura is pretty sure that Ino _has_ drank the first pot and just made a second one with that response. "There's still coffee. Go get dressed, Forehead. I'll fix your cup up out of the generosity of my heart."

With that, what else can Sakura do? She shakes her head, giving up for the moment, and stalks down the hall to her bedroom. Her bedroom is quiet and lonely and Sakura has to admit that, well, lately she's been sleeping more on the couch or floor. It's not that she means to, but with Ino over, she finds that they spend a lot of time talking or watching movies and playing games until they just... drift off. And by the time that happens, she's so tired that she actually sleeps instead of staring up at the ceiling feeling like the worst person in the world.

She's grateful for the evenings spent in conversation. It eases the aching loneliness and makes evenings that would otherwise be spent brooding more comfortable. Getting dressed doesn't take her long and, as it's not a work day, she wears a lacy knee-length skirt and a strappy tank top rather than her more utilitarian work clothes. She still tucks weapons into her clothing though--she's ninja enough to always do that. Brushing her hair takes longer as it's getting to the point where she's tempted to trim it just to keep it from being annoying and yet... and yet, part of her wouldn't mind having it longer. The in-between phase is trying though.

With a shrug, Sakura finishes brushing it and then ties it back with her hitae-ate, using it as a headband, then she wanders back to the kitchen. Maybe she'll ask Ino later and see what she thinks. 

As promised, there's a cup of coffee waiting for her, still steaming and Sakura doesn't need to sip it to know that it will have the precise amount of sugar and milk that she likes in her coffee. She picks it up and sips it anyway. Perfect.

Ino is good with the details.

"So," Sakura says, sitting at the table as Ino finishes scribbling something in their journal. "What's the plan for today?"

That there _is_ one just seems like the right assumption to her. Sakura doesn't have anything planned and that means, therefore, that Ino must. If pressed, Sakura would admit that all _she_ wants to do is work, or perhaps go back to bed.

"There's a play going on this afternoon," Ino says, right on cue. "It's called _Marionette_. It's about a puppeteer who falls in love with her puppet and goes on a journey to bring the puppet to life. I was thinking we could go to that. And there's a sale in east market for fabric. You need more fabric for your latest quilt, right?"

Sakura sips her coffee and sighs with pleasure. "I do," she replies, considering those options. They're not bad ones. "The fabric sale--those stores open in the morning?" She's more familiar with north market because that's closer to her apartment.

Ino glances at the clock. "They open in thirty minutes."

Sakura nods. "Let's do that and then hit up the play this afternoon. What time is that at?"

"One."

Despite everything that's gone wrong with her life, Sakura finds that the day doesn't sound so bad. "Want to go out for breakfast?" she asks, as Ino's made no move to make anything and Sakura doesn't want to, not when she knows doing so will just make her remember mornings where Kakashi cooked for her here. "Do that and then go shopping. We can stop by here to drop things off before heading out to the play." She taps her fingers on the table. "What are you looking for?"

It was only fair, after all, to help out when Ino is helping _her_ out.

"Aunt Shoko has said that if I pick out fabric I like, she'll make me new curtains," Ino says. "I'm hardly going to turn down _that_. She makes the prettiest things."

Sakura finds she can't disagree with that. "Lucky," she laughs, "are you getting that done because she still hopes you'll fall for her son?" Akimichi Shoko isn't, in terms of blood, Ino's aunt. Rather, she's Chouji's mother and Ino has known her for what seems like forever. 

"No," Ino says loftily. "She likes me on my own merits. I can be perfectly likeable, just so you know."

"I know," Sakura replies, not wanting to start an argument, even a good-natured one, this early in the morning. Not when she's still down from... everything else. She finishes her coffee and stands up. "You need a shower still," she says, "this once, I'll do the dishes while you go get ready."

Ino wrinkles her nose at her, but cheerfully. "Slave driver," she says, but stands. "I'll be quicker than you."

"Probably," Sakura admits shamelessly, and then has to smile as Ino leaves the room laughing. It helps, she thinks, to have someone around who makes her smile right now. It lets her pretend she's not still a crybaby at heart. She doesn't think it's wrong to be one but it gets tiring. She'd rather be tired for more pleasant reasons than heartbreak.

Sakura glances at the notebook. Ino hasn't given it back to her, so she doesn't pick it up. That wouldn't be right--to read something that's not finished. Instead, she washes the cups and then cleans the coffee pot. She's just setting that down on the rack to dry when her phone rings. Wiping her hands on a blue dishtowel, Sakura manages to grab the phone on the second ring.

"Sakura-chan!" It's Naruto and she finds herself smiling.

"Hi," she says, "you back in one piece from your mission?" It's a ridiculous question and she knows it but he just laughs and skips over it. That's alright with her. 

He talks about a mile a minute about the team he'd been given for the mission and how they hadn't gotten into any trouble, which was boring, and how he's now _so_ tired and how he hasn't eaten anything yet and it's all kind of silly but, well, that's Naruto.

And it's refreshing to not have to give much input in the conversation. She leans against the wall and laughs in all the right places and waits for him to get to the point. Naruto always takes a year when he could take a minute when there's something on his mind. She's had enough phone calls from him to know that he's working his way up to something.

Eventually, though, he winds down through his recital of what happened on his mission (the 'stuff that he can tell her' edition, since she's broken him of the habit of telling her everything--including the confidential stuff) and he let's silence fall for a moment.

"Sakura-chan," he says, a hint of worry entering his voice for the first time. "There's some really weird rumours going on."

"Oh?" she asks, frowning a little and knowing that's in her voice too. "About what?"

"Most of them are..." She pictures him shrugging as he lets that sentence trail off. "But there's one about you and Kakashi-sensei--you're still together right? Because the mill is pretty sure that you're not."

Sakura doesn't answer that and, after an awkward moment that stretches into a minute and then two, Naruto soldiers on, "I just thought I'd ask because the other option is going and--"

"Beating his face in?" Sakura says dryly. Very dryly.

"Well, yeah." Naruto is unabashed about that. She doesn't even need to see him to know that he's entirely and incredibly sincere about what he's saying. He cares for Kakashi-sensei, she knows that, but she also knows that part of Naruto still loves her like _that_ and even beyond that, they've been friends for a long time now. 

She knows that she's his best friend, though he's not hers for all that he's very dear to her.

"It's true," she says, figuring it's better for him to hear it from her than from anyone else. At least he's called. "But before you get mad about him dumping me-- _I_ dumped _him_."

Which is the truth and possibly the only thing that will keep Naruto from going off to teach Kakashi a lesson. Despite the way part of Sakura would like that, she's warmed more by the thought that Naruto _would_ do it and finds that, knowing he would, she doesn't really want him to go ahead with it.

Silence answers her and she can picture Naruto gaping. "You--," he splutters, "he-- _why_?"

"Because it was the right thing to do," she says, and tells him about Rin and how she'd felt uncomfortable being there and not knowing if she was another girl's replacement when there were so many ways she could be.

"Ne, Sakura-chan," he says, "did you ever ask Kakashi-sensei about her?"

Sakura swallows. "No," she says, "because I don't know if I could trust his answer."

Which is the truth. It's not about him and thinking that he'd tell a lie to save their relationship. She honestly doesn't know if he would and it doesn't matter: this is about her and her inability to _trust_ that he'd tell her the truth. 

Even if he did, Sakura thinks that she'd be looking for a lie. Which is no way to keep a relationship going, even when cutting it off hurts worse than acid.

Trust, her mother had always said, had to be present in a relationship for it to work.

"Maybe you should?" Naruto asks artlessly. "But if you don't--okay. Do you need me to beat him up?"

That makes her giggle despite herself. It's horrible to laugh while she feels like crying. "No," she says, "I think I'll be okay. Ino's already had words with him and if I know her, she'll have more."

" _Ow_ ," he says, and she knows he means that.

"What's the other rumour?" she asks, rolling her eyes and mouthing 'Naruto' at Ino, who has just left the bathroom, wrapped in a towel of her own. Ino arches an eyebrow inquiringly. Sakura shrugs--she'll have to tell Ino after the conversation. "You mentioned more than one."

Naruto hesitates for a long moment, then says, "They're saying people are getting sick, really sick," he says, "and that they're not getting better no matter what the old lady does."

Sakura tilts her head thoughtfully. "Where did you hear that?" she asks. She's trying to remember if she's heard anything about cases like that and… can't.

"Everywhere," he says, "I heard it at the mission center and by the Hokage Monument and on three different streets walking home. I've been in the village maybe an hour, Sakura-chan."

Naruto is many things and not all of them good. She's called him out on his shortcomings more than once. But not even she can deny that when it comes to listening to the things other people say... he's a match for Ino, though his reasons are different. As a child, Naruto learnt to listen so he knew when to run. He continues that out of habit as a grown-up. Ino just likes to know secrets.

Sakura lets out her breath in a sigh. "I'll look into it," she says, "but I'll tell you that _I_ haven't come across anything in the hospital that sounds like that."

This doesn't mean there isn't substance to those rumours but Naruto takes it the way she wants him to. He laughs and sounds sheepish. "Thanks Sakura-chan," he says. "If you say that's the truth, then that's good enough for me."

"Would I lie to you?" she asks, teasing him just a little. "I'm hurt, Naruto."

He's laughing as they say good-bye and Sakura is glad for that despite the way her heart twists in her chest. How many people know about her and Kakashi now? She's managed to keep it a secret but now that he's back… and what was that about people getting sick? The last thing they need is something like that.

"What did Naruto want?" Ino asks curiously. 

Sakura turns to look at her. Ino's got on short-shorts and a tank top that leaves most of her stomach bare. Her hair is caught up in two tight braids that start at her temples and then work their way down the back of her head. The tips of the braids hit her knees. Sakura envies the skill it takes to braid all that hair so quickly and have it look so tidy.

"He heard about Kakashi and I," Sakura says, looking away. "He offered to beat Kakashi up."

"You should let him," Ino says, "I would have. But you probably didn't, did you?"

"No," Sakura says. "I dumped him, remember?"

Ino just shrugs, like that doesn't really matter to her, and Sakura finds that she has to repress the urge to smile slightly. That's just where Ino's priorities are. 

Sakura presses her lips closed on any sentiment like that as she fetches her purse. Ino wriggles into a pair of sandals and does the same. "Ino," she says, "have you heard anything about an illness that Tsunade-shishou can't heal?"

Ino shakes her head almost immediately. "Not me," she says, "do you want me to keep an ear out?"

"Yeah," Sakura replies. "If you don't mind?"

"For you?" Ino says, tossing the words over her shoulder as she heads for the door. "I'll even do it free of charge. You going to be doing your own poking around?"

Sakura follows, absently setting the security with a few quick seals and a touch of chakra. "Yeah," she says again. "I don't like rumours like that. They don't come out of nowhere."

She steps out into the bright sunlight and blinks to clear her vision. Ino is leaning against the railing by the stairs and toying with the tip of one golden braid. "I wouldn't worry about it too much," Ino says. "I mean, you work at the hospital, you're Hokage-sama's protégé; how would that happen without you knowing about it?" Ino stretches, tilting her face up to the sun. "It's probably just another political attempt to discredit Hokage-sama and undermine her support."

"Ugh," Sakura says, "I can't stand politics." She means that. They're messy and complicated and, as far as Sakura is concerned, serve more to cause headaches than get anything useful done. 

"Funny," Ino laughs. "I love them." Sakura suspects Ino loves them for the same reasons that Sakura dislikes them. "Besides," Ino continues on as Sakura locks up her place tighter than a clam, "you'd better get used to them--when Naruto becomes Hokage, who do you think is going to be one of his advisors?"

The fact that that's true does nothing to stop Sakura from wrinkling her nose. "He'd do better," she says, "if he picked you and Shikamaru. Between the two of you, you wouldn't let anything that wasn't life or death to the village get anywhere near him."

"Yeah," Ino says, with a bit of a sigh. "That'd be something, wouldn't it? But Shikamaru's busy with Temari-san these days and I don't know if we'd work all that well together anyway right now."

"Oh?" Sakura asks, as they head down the stairs to reach one of the rooftop paths that are everywhere in Konoha. The wind is brisk enough that for a moment she wishes she had a coat. Going back for one is an idea considered and then dismissed: Ino would tease her something awful. "Something going on?"

"Just the usual," Ino says, with a nonchalant wave of one hand. "I'm not nearly so charitable as you are, you know?"

"I don't know," Sakura replies. "I think you've been pretty good about him and Temari-san." Sakura means that too. It's not common knowledge that Ino's crushed on Shikamaru for years but as Ino's best friend, Sakura knows better than most. "You were very polite to her at that party last week. Seriously, if I hadn't known that you're not so pleased about her and him, I'd have never guessed. I don't think even _Shikamaru_ figured it out and he'd be one to know, yeah?"

"And he was watching," Ino comments. "Which is something you're too nice to out-right say. I don't know if I ought to be offended he thinks I'd be that petty or if I ought to be smug I didn't live up to his expectations. No, I've been a good girl, but I've also been minimizing my contact with them. I'm not good enough to see them every day and not be catty. This way, I can keep my dignity. It's his choice, after all, and I've got to respect that even if it's not..." 

"What you'd like," Sakura sighs. "Yeah."

"Oh well," Ino says lightly. "It's his loss. And this way, he doesn't think I'm some sort of harpy. I'd rather be his friend than have him think of me that way."

"I think," Sakura says, "that you'll always be his friend." She's jealous of that, in a way, because Ino still has both Shikamaru and Chouji. But they're equal too, because Sakura still has her former sensei and Ino does not. She knows better than to say that though. It's the last thing they need when facing a day of shopping. 

"That's the plan," Ino admits, "even if it means putting up with her. She's not so bad. I could easily be her friend if it wasn't for--well, whatever. I mean, if he's happy, I guess that's the important thing, right?" 

They head out onto the walkway proper and continue talking in low voices. "Well," Sakura says, "if that's how you look at it. Getting even might be more fun but then you've got to think about what you're getting even _for_."

"Which would be a total waste of time," Ino decides. "I'll find someone else and I'll get over my finickiness--"

" _Finickiness?_ That's not a word."

"--it is now, so shush up, Forehead, _anyway_. I'll get over my _finickiness_ with them being a couple. In the meantime, I'm just doing the smart thing and keeping a little space. Which they should appreciate! Besides," Ino adds, "someone has to watch over you."

Sakura smiles as the sun beams down on them. It's not that she feels like she's in a good mood, not exactly, the great gaping chasm of what she's done with her first serious successful-until-now relationship is still in the back of her mind, but at the same time... it's a lovely day and she's with her best friend. That helps.

And she knows that if she starts to sulk, Ino will have something to say about that.

"I'm glad," she says, stepping a little quicker to walk side-by-side with Ino. "I mean, that you're looking after me."

"Stop that," Ino laughs, looking pleased despite her objection. "You're just going to embarrass me and then where will you be?"

"Bereft," Sakura says. "Lonely, pathetic, and sad." She's not sure how much she means all of that, just that the idea of losing Ino too, when she's just given up Kakashi (and you can't lose, she reminds herself sternly, what you've given up of your own free will) makes her feel like all she's listing and more. 

Ino stops so abruptly that Sakura nearly crashes into her, and then, before Sakura can object, Ino wraps her arms around Sakura in an abrupt hug and lifts her from the ground. 

"Ino!" Sakura yelps, giggling as she flails. "Put me down!"

"You're going to be fine," Ino says, giving Sakura a spin as she laughs and, despite herself, Sakura laughs too. "I mean it." Ino sets Sakura down.

"Pig," Sakura mutters without heat, while she straightens her clothing. "Did you have to cause a scene?"

"It's what I do best," Ino replies loftily, giving her purse an extra swing to emphasize her words. "Besides, you needed to hear that."

"You're impossible," Sakura says, shoving at Ino. Then she has to hurry to keep up with her. It's not fair that Ino's got longer legs than she does but Sakura is used to that. Their differences are old and normal ones. "How do you know I'm going to be fine?"

"I know all," Ino insists, with another laugh. "I see all. And, besides, with me looking after you, how could you be anything _but_ fine?"

The worst part, Sakura thinks, is that Ino's got a point. Even if things are utterly horrible, Ino's got a way of wriggling into her life like a ray of sunshine. She still remembers the first time that Ino came and found her and brought her into a better life. It's embarrassing to admit that, deep down, Sakura still thinks that Ino's got that power.

Not that Sakura is going to say that out loud. Talk about sounding like a child when she's trying very hard to be anything but. 

"Man," Sakura says, lifting her hands in surrender. "I'm not sure I ought to say anything. Your head might get too big to fit through doorways." And while Ino looks to be formulating a response to that, Sakura smacks her lightly on the arm and takes off running. "You're it!" she calls and runs faster.

Ino's laugh chases after her as they dart through busy streets, the sun smiling down on them.

* * *


	4. Capriccio

* * *

He reappears near the stone that's been his anchor for years. Some of his most important people are inscribed on it, along with countless others. Kakashi breathes in the night air and tries to find his emotional equilibrium. 

Sleepily, birds chirp their opinion of his abrupt appearance and a breeze tugs at his hair. It should be soothing. It usually is.

It's not. He can't remember the last time he's been this off-kilter, or rather, he can, but he doesn't want to because the last time he's felt anything like this was back when it had been first Obito, then Minato-sensei, then Rin all taken from him, one after another. 

Kakashi squeezes his eye shut and forces himself to breathe in the steady, carefully regulated pattern that's the first step to meditation.

This is nothing like losing them, he tells himself savagely. Sakura is still alive, after all. To compare this to their deaths is an insult to their memory. 

He knows that, logically. The pain in his chest doesn't seem as aware. Perhaps he's lost the ability to differentiate between pains after so long having set himself apart out of fear of connecting again. 

And look where making connections has gotten him, Kakashi thinks dryly, still breathing deep. He feels like he's run a marathon. He needs to know who broke his confidence to tell Sakura about Rin. 

But first, he needs to calm down. 

There's a fire rolling in his blood and he can feel it lurking underneath his thoughts. He's angry right now. So angry he's nearly trembling.

He's hurt, too, but that's a secondary consideration that drives the anger. He wants to go and talk to Sakura but he doesn't dare. Not right now. Kakashi doesn't know what he'd say and in that case--it's better to say nothing.

Time passes as he stares at the names on the stone, listening to the thump of his heart and forcing himself to breathe steadily. One blink on his eye and it's dark out, the dead of night. Another blink and nothing has changed. A third blink and the sky is slowly beginning to lighten.

A fourth blink and the sun is cresting the horizon and he's spent all night staring at the stone and finding no answers. Maybe it's his exhaustion, both emotional and physical, that sends his thoughts down a path of whimsy for he finds himself wondering if it's Rin who has wanted Sakura to know. 

That's ridiculous though and he shelves the thought, burying it under the indignation that his friends believe that they have the right to meddle in his life. He can't think of why, not even now, when he's calmed down, and that torments him.

A noise, like the snap of a twig, sends him spinning away from the stone as he tries to locate the disruption. He can't see anything and the motion makes him dizzy: he's been up too long without eating, without resting, and now he's paying for it. 

The ice-cold touch of a gentle hand turns him back towards the stone.

Rin drops her hand, tucking both of them behind her in a gesture that he's almost forgotten she did. She smiles at him. "Hello Kakashi," she says quietly, her voice an echoing whisper that somehow seems very loud.

He freezes. _This is an impossibility_ , Kakashi's thoughts babble under the shock. He wants to move back because this can't be real. He wants to move forward because he _wants_ this to be real. Caught between two urges, he does nothing. Just stares. 

That doesn't seem to bother her. But then, nothing much ever had. (Or is it 'nothing much ever _has_ '?) She just smiles at him again and he wonders if she's not allowed to say anything more. If she's just going to disappear again.

 _No_. He can't let her do that. Kakashi wrenches himself out of the frozen stasis and takes a step towards her. She's sitting on the stone, which would be something he'd take anyone else to task for because it's _beyond_ inappropriate, but he can see through her legs as they swing back and forth. And he can see through her body to the trees behind her.

He doesn't believe in ghosts, so this can't be real. He wants to believe in ghosts, so that this _can_ be real.

"Rin," he says, taking a step towards her. "What are you doing here?"

Kakashi is glad, desperately glad, that there's no one else around. Just him and--and someone who he is hoping isn't his imagination but believes might be. 

She studies him, still looking the age she'd been when she'd died, and Kakashi wonders what she thinks of him, all grown up now in reality and not just the way he'd thought he'd been back then. (They'd all thought themselves older than they'd been, once upon a time.) 

"Don't be silly," she says, her laugh spinning down his spine like an ice cube. 

He shivers. "I'm not," he says, "you--you're _dead_."

It's taken him years to wrap his mind around that. But he's had years and years and Sakura's entire lifetime and he's gotten used to that ugly, horrible truth though it still hurts. Now he finds that, maybe, he has no idea what the truth is.

She just shrugs at him. It's endearing, that non-answer, where had she been alive it would have been infuriating. While Kakashi is quite good at dodging around a question himself he likes it rather less when other people do the same. But Rin is... different. 

Because she's dead, he reminds himself. 

"You're upset," she says, leaning forward a little. "Would you like to tell me about it?"

The world spins dizzily around him and he lurches forward, feeling like the ground is collapsing out from under him. He looks down; the ground isn't moving. It still feels like it is. Kakashi breathes deeply and then looks back at the stone.

Rin's gone.

Without thinking, without considering what that could mean, Kakashi lunges forward, hoping it's a lie, looking for her. His foot twists under him and flings him forward as he spots her, standing just beyond the stone, looking up at the sky. He reaches for her, unheeding of his next step, which slips off the monument and he trips, for the first time in years.

He doesn't remember hitting his head, only that there's pain and darkness wells up to swallow him. He's not worried though. He can hear her worried voice, chiding him for being so clumsy. Rin, he thinks fuzzily, will look after him.

She always has.

* * *

Kakashi blinks up at the ceiling and tries to remember whose ceiling this is. It's like every other ceiling, however, and that gives him very few clues. That's a little distressing but he's used to making the best of things. His head aches like someone has stomped on it and, when he tries to remember how that happened he finds nothing, not a single memory that can explain it. He remembers seeing Rin and then… nothing after that.

He doesn't like that. He _really_ doesn't like that. 

Kakashi turns his head and spots a clock. Levering himself up just high enough to see it he frowns as he discovers that it's just after nine in the morning. It's then that he realizes that while he's still wearing his hitae-ate and mask, his Jounin vest has been removed along with his sandals. 

He considers that carefully--how many people know him well enough to do that without him waking up immediately?--and relaxes just a little. There's a very small number and while he can't tell anything from this room--it's plain, done in beiges and blues, and very obviously a guest room--he knows just from his current state that he's with someone he can trust.

Staring up at the ceiling a bit longer, Kakashi is surprised to find himself drifting off again. He doesn't fight it though. Not when being awake means he's got to figure out what happened to Rin.

Had he really seen her?

He falls asleep before managing to come up with any answer to that.

The next time he wakes, the first thing he sees is too-bright teeth, and knows his question about who'd taken him in is answered. "Oh no," he murmurs, "not you."

It lacks heat. It even lacks sarcasm. Kakashi is too heart-weary for either.

"It's one in the afternoon," Gai says, ignoring the comment. "It's about time you've woken up."

That's not quite something that Gai would say, which niggles at Kakashi as he forces himself to sit up. "One?" Kakashi says dubiously. He hasn't slept that much since he's been a child. It couldn't have been later than five or six in the morning when he'd--

What had happened to him? He remembers being at the monument and then... Rin and… nothing. His head throbs. "I... hit my head?" he guesses, carefully feeling for the bump. It stings a bit under his touch. 

"I found you," Gai says, "sprawled out at the foot of the stone." 

There's no judgment in Gai's voice and Kakashi finds that comforting. Gai has done odder. 

He's left, however, feeling awkward at the realization that he really should thank Gai and the discovery that he's got no idea what to say. 'Thank you' isn't something he and Gai say to each other. 

"You should rest," Gai says, his loud voice tempered with what Kakashi is surprised to realize is concern. "Over-straining yourself doesn't help anything."

"You'd know that, wouldn't you?" Kakashi comments, a bit snarkily. 

"Of course," Gai replies, ignoring the slight, and grinning a little. Kakashi supposed that he'd walked right into that one. Gai was likely the best in the village at pushing his boundaries of what his body could do without knocking himself into a coma or collapsing. 

"What day is it?" Kakashi asks quickly, not wanting to have to deal with anything about power or youth right now. He's surprised that Gai hasn't said anything about it so far.

Gai tells him and then tells him to get cleaned up or go back to sleep. Kakashi is almost tempted but he remembers what Tsunade-sama had said about, well, about everything, and knows that there's not going to be any sleep. He's only got another two days.

He can't just waste them sleeping. 

Not when he needs to talk to Sakura and to his friends and also needs to get a look out for something out of the ordinary. Something to do with people being ill.

How about my life? Kakashi thinks dryly. It's a little humiliating to be rescued by his so-called eternal rival. Nonetheless, Kakashi picks himself up out of the bed and makes his way towards the shower.

Once that's done and he's dressed in his clothing (which is dirty, but it's better than borrowing one of Gai's skintight outfits) Kakashi has to admit that he feels more like himself again.

A hungry self, but that's alright. He leans in the doorway where Gai is reading through a scroll. His rival looks intent upon his work and Kakashi wonders what he's reading before remembering it's probably some taijutsu scroll that only Gai would be able to use. He doesn't fool himself into thinking that Gai hasn't noticed he's there: it's Gai's house, of course Gai would know where Kakashi is every second of his visit.

Kakashi is only surprised that Gai has been as tolerable as he as been.

"I'm leaving," he says, before he can feel too awkward about everything. 

Gai looks up at him, bushy brows beetled with concern. "Are you certain?" he asks, getting up from the desk. "You should eat first."

"No," Kakashi says, "I'm..."

Gai brushes past him and before Kakashi quite realizes what's going on, he finds himself seated at the kitchen table with a bowl of leftovers that look like someone has taken the remains of several different meals and combined them together. To his surprise it smells good.

While he considers if he ought to eat--it probably would be good for him, Kakashi admits--Gai takes the plates that the leftovers had been on and begins filling the sink.

He spares a moment to stare at Gai's back, but the other man is paying no attention to him. Then, because now that he's in front of food, he really _is_ hungry, he eats quickly.

It's good, he thinks, for leftovers. More appreciated is the fact that it's warm and filling and that Gai makes no fuss about Kakashi's dislike of being watched while he eats. That's something he's still got problems with--with Sakura, he thinks, as his heart twists in his chest. Maybe he doesn't have that problem any more. Funny thing, he thinks, to miss that.

Once the dishes are done and Kakashi has finished his bowl, he's even less sure that he ought to just disappear. He wants to, this enforced hospitality is making his skin crawl, but at the same time... he feels a little better. That must be the sleep and the food, he tells himself, it definitely can't be the company. Though Gai _is_ being quieter than normal. Maybe that's it.

"Gai," he says, "do you know who has been speaking about Rin lately?"

He knows that it wasn't Gai. Gai seldom keeps his opinion to himself and he's been nothing but ecstatic about Kakashi and Sakura. At the time, before everything had been turned upside down, Kakashi had found Gai's enthusing about a second springtime of love annoying.

Now he's counting on it.

If there's any one of his friends that has accepted Sakura with everything that their relationship came with, then it's Gai.

Gai frowns a little, which looks a lot more imposing due to his features. Kakashi waits and tries not to drown in impatience. "I can't think of anyone in specific," Gai says, after a moment. "Though there's been an upswing of talk in general about medical ninja these days."

"Oh?" Kakashi is pleased that that comes out sounding like it should: detached and mildly curious. 

Of course, Gai isn't fooled, but that's alright. Kakashi's still out of whack and the practice on an old friend isn't going to hurt him at all. "Insidious things," the other man murmurs. "About illnesses that people can't heal and medical ninja going dark."

"That's ridiculous," Kakashi says, frowning. "Hokage-sama's a medical nin herself. She'd crack down on anything she thought unethical in a heartbeat."

Gai shrugs. "I didn't say I believe it," he points out. "Just that's what I've heard. It's only talk right now as far as I know."

Kakashi frowns harder, thinking about his conversation with Tsunade-sama. There's one thing, he thinks, that she hasn't figured out how to heal yet. Which is quite unusual for her, but all the same... she only mentioned four people being afflicted. That's far too few for anyone to get up in arms about. 

"Any idea on who is driving the rumours?" he asks, not really expecting an answer. Gai isn't much of one for gossip, preferring to spend his time in training and training and more training.

"No," Gai says. "Though I heard it from Kurenai-san. She does not believe it either but thought it curious enough to pass on." 

Kakashi winces a bit. Kurenai, unlike Gai, does like gossip. He hopes that she's been passing it on with the clear implication that she doesn't believe it. "Right," he says, "I'll have to ask her about it."

Besides, he thinks, he needs to ask her about Rin anyway and if she's been talking to Sakura. "If you hear anything," Kakashi says, "would you pass it on?"

"Do you think it's a problem?" Gai asks, crossing his arms and leaning against the counter. "I'd assumed it was just another trend."

"Maybe it is," Kakashi admits. "But I don't like it. What's not being healed and who is saying there's something that's being ignored? That's not something that's idle gossip when the hospitals haven't reported any epidemic or new illness."

Which was true enough, he thinks. The hospitals are good at keeping the populace up-to-date on the new things they've got to watch out for. Sometimes he finds they're too obsessive that way. It doesn't sit well at all to think that there's something being ignored.

"I will," Gai says, though he doesn't sound pleased. "Are you in town for the next--"

"Two days," Kakashi says, "and then I'm being sent out again. It was three but..."

Well, he's wasted most of today for all that he'd needed the rest. His head still hurts and while he's done missions while feeling worse, he's glad he doesn't have to do a mission right this second. 

"Alright," Gai says. "If I find anything I'll let you know."

Kakashi nods and then disappears in a swirl of leaves. That's goodbye enough for them. He lands up on the next roof and wonders if he's made a mistake.

Gai is about as subtle as a bull in a china shop, after all. Kakashi consider that and then shrugs a little. Perhaps having someone like Gai looking around for the perpetrators of the rumours will scare them underground. As well, he thinks, having Gai be the obvious person who is searching means that they're not likely to think that Hokage-sama is taking it seriously.

Having convinced himself of the intelligence of sending Gai after rumour mongers (he pities them, he does, for all that Gai was very… muted… today, probably out of deference to Kakashi's head injury) Kakashi heads home. He doesn't want to, he admits, but he can tell that he needs more rest despite the way he feels like he can't afford to take the time. 

All too soon he finds himself at his place and lets himself in, mildly bemused as he notes that despite the unlocked door no one has entered since he left. He wrinkles his nose at the smell of food--the supper he'd bought last night and then abandoned to go seek Sakura--gone bad and tosses that in the trash. His apartment seems smaller and colder today, for some reason, and Kakashi tells himself to stop being ridiculous.

He wonders where the spatula has gone. He can't remember when he dropped it. At the stone, most likely, and of course Gai wouldn't know to pick it up. He'll have to get it later.

He enters his bedroom and without bothering to turn the lights on strips out of his dirty clothing. A quick shower later, as going to bed while having been wearing dirty clothes doesn't appeal to him, Kakashi, wearing nothing but a light pair of drawstring pants re-enters his room, flicking on the light as he does so.

Rin is sitting on his bed.

 _That's it,_ Kakashi thinks, _I've gone mad_.

She stares at him, the little girl to his grown man, and Kakashi can't find words to say to her. The worst part is that there's a part of him that wants her to be real. It wouldn't be--be anything like he'd hoped for back then, but she'd be real.

But she can't be real because she's _dead_.

Kakashi jerks his head in an abrupt nod to her and then, without saying anything, steps backwards and shuts the door to his bedroom. He'll sleep on the couch, he supposes. Because there's no way he's going back into his room today. 

Maybe not even tomorrow. 

He shakes out the blanket that Sakura likes to curl up in while they're watching movies and retrieves a few of the pillows from the chairs. Setting them up, he considers the fact that, really, he's slept in worse and slept just fine.

It's just weird to have banished himself from his own room. Kakashi makes himself comfortable on the couch and closes his eyes and hopes sleep comes quickly.

He doesn't know if it does or not, but the next thing he knows, there's a banging at his door. Waking fully, he blinks at the door and then sighs when he realizes whose chakra signature is outside. Getting up takes a few seconds, another one is taken to make sure that that his mask and hitae-ate are straight, and then he's standing. 

Kakashi glances at the clock and scowls. It's only half past three in the afternoon. A visitor is perfectly in their rights to come by at this time.

The banging starts up again--apparently, he thinks with some dark amusement, he's not moving fast enough--and Kakashi times the banging and opens the door precisely when it would throw his visitor off balance the most.

As predicted, there's stumble and then a thud and then a moan.

"Hello Naruto," Kakashi says, fighting the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose.

Naruto, all orange and black (he thanks Jiraiya-sama for getting Naruto out of an entirely orange suit: Kakashi had never even tried, giving it up as a futile task from the start) and yellow gets up off the ground. "Sorry, Kakashi-sensei," he says, sounding even like he means it which amuses Kakashi on some level.

Hasn't Naruto learnt that Kakashi does stuff like that deliberately?

"What do you want?" Kakashi asks, leaning against the wall.

"Were you sleeping?" Naruto asks, brushing past Kakashi and heading down the hall. Kakashi follows, placing bets with himself. "In the middle of the afternoon? You're getting soft in your old age, Kakashi-sen--"

Naruto stops abruptly. 

"Why are you sleeping on your couch?" he asks, entirely baffled.

Kakashi mentally awards himself the requisite points for predicting basically what Naruto said. "I felt like it," Kakashi says nonchalantly, because he's not going to go into the fact that he's seeing dead people with, well, anyone. Much less Naruto. "What are you here for?" Maybe if he changes the wording slightly, he'll get an answer quicker.

And then he can…

Well. Go back to his brooding. Kakashi feels he's entitled after being dumped and then hallucinating the night away and _then_ waking up in Gai's care. He's nowhere near the right headspace to go and talk to Sakura and even if he was, he suspects that he'd have to deal with Ino and that's not a thought that thrills him. Anger pinches him at the very idea.

Naruto stares at the couch a moment longer and Kakashi is almost morbidly curious about what he's thinking. He doesn't ask, because that would imply he cares. Which he doesn't. Much.

"Sakura-chan says she broke up with you," Naruto says finally. He turns and gives Kakashi a glance that is a little too grumpy to be friendly. 

Kakashi wishes that he was wearing more, suddenly. He doesn't _think_ Naruto is going to fly into a rage, if only because Naruto probably wouldn't have greeted him so normally if that was the case, but all the same… he resigns himself to the lack of protection and hopes he won't have to defend himself against his one-time student. Who is, after all, more powerful than he is, though Kakashi still has Naruto beat in skill and experience.

"You'll have to ask her about that," Kakashi says, his voice neutral and blessedly blank. "She'd know more than I would about it."

Since his first indication that something was wrong had been a note, yesterday, on his kitchen table, Naruto can't possibly think that Kakashi has answers. He wonders if Sakura told Naruto that.

"What I don't understand," Naruto says, like he hasn't heard a word Kakashi said, "is why you wouldn't have said anything to her before."

Kakashi blinks. "Naruto," he says, "she broke up with me. Not the other way around." He feels that this is a distinction that he's got to make so that people don't get the wrong idea--only, he thinks darkly, people _have_ the wrong idea already. He's tempted to just give up on the human race right now. 

"I know that!" Naruto snaps. "What I don't understand, Kakashi-sensei, is why she never heard about Rin from you."

Kakashi gives in to the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose and does. It doesn't make him feel better. Nor does the fact that, behind Naruto, he can see Rin--Rin's _ghost_ \--peering into the living room from the hall that leads to the bathroom and his bedroom. Madness. He's going mad. "Why should she have?" Kakashi demands. "Rin's been dead Sakura's _entire lifetime_."

"You love her," Naruto says simply. 

_I love both of them_ , Kakashi thinks grumpily. "Which changes nothing," he says, icy anger rattling through him though his voice is merely cool. "I'm not explaining this to you. This isn't _your_ business."

Rin has stepped into the room now and even as Kakashi speaks, she wraps her arms around Naruto's waist. Naruto doesn't seem to notice which just supports Kakashi's theory that he's completely lost his mind in the last day or so.

Naruto's face is set mulishly. "Kakashi-sensei--" he begins.

"Get out." Kakashi's voice is low and angry. He barely recognizes it himself. All of a sudden he's angry again.

Naruto stops, looking concerned for him for the first time rather than on Sakura's behalf. "Kakashi-sensei," he says, "are you okay?"

" _Get. Out._ " Kakashi repeats. It's in a dark and deep voice that he doesn't know as his. That worries him, under the anger that's sprouted up. 

Naruto stumbles back as Rin lets go of him.

Then, because Naruto is irrepressible and impossible and absolutely bloody-minded with determination, he stops and sets his chin. "No," Naruto says, "I think you should go talk to Sakura-chan."

Kakashi wants to tell him that right now is possibly the worst time to do such a thing—he wants to, god does he want to, but he's talking in a voice he doesn't recognize and it's a voice that's disturbed Naruto, which is hard to do, and Rin is standing behind and to the side of Naruto shaking her head side-to-side in a silent _no_. 

No, he shouldn't go see her.

Kakashi is pretty sure that he understands _absolutely nothing_ of what's going on. 

"I can't," he says, and maybe it's the desperation in his voice that makes Naruto shut up. "Not now."

Rin smiles at him.

For a moment, Kakashi lets himself think Naruto will let him off the hook. Naruto isn't cruel after all: surely he can see that something is wrong. 

"That is _such_ crap," Naruto says, sounding disgusted and crushing Kakashi's hopes. Naruto grabs Kakashi by the arm and, before Kakashi can pull away, they disappear in a cloud of leaves.

Kakashi's last glimpse of his living room includes Rin, with her lips pursed and her eyebrows drawn together.

* * *


	5. Adagio

* * *

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" a voice asks peevishly. "After all the work that's gone into--well, you know--you want to put them back together again?"

Leaning against the wall of the bathroom stall, they listen to the person on the other end of the line. "You think so? I mean, I can twist it, but wouldn't it be simpler to just… no?" There's a momentary silence. "It _would_ give us time to properly monit--right. That's true. Better to control it than have it happen anyway. But why today?"

There's a flush of a nearby toilet. It's no one important though and they haven't been paying attention to the voice anyway. Their presence is logged and then ignored. "Serious? Already? That's faster than project--look, report to Hokage-sama first and get her go ahead -- what do you mean how? You know how, get one of you to do it, there's only a million of you."

"Stop laughing." The voice sounds amused. "While you're with Hokage-sama, can you direct more chakra to my--yeah, I'm getting low. Okay. That'd be great. If you show up, I'll assume you've got the go ahead and we'll wing it from there. I've got to go, intermission is almost over."

* * *

"I can't believe we spent money on that play," Sakura complains good-naturedly as she and Ino walk down the busy street. It's getting towards late afternoon now and the sun is beginning the slow crawl towards setting. "The whole plot was just a ploy by evil nin! What is _that_?"

"Oh come on," Ino says laughingly. "It wasn't that bad, right? And the bad guys were seriously smokin'. That's got to be a point in their favour! I liked the marionette's plot twist!"

"You _would_. It was creepy," Sakura grouses, rolling her eyes. She's not sure if Ino is saying she likes it because Sakura is complaining about it or because Ino actually enjoyed it.

Though the bad guys had been pretty attractive. 

"Well, yeah," Ino says, like that doesn't matter. "You've got to admit it was a pretty clever ploy though. I wonder if the writer has ever been a ninja or if they're just going off other stories and using their own knowledge of what it means to be one?"

Sakura considers that. "I don't know," she says dubiously. "I mean, the costumes were pretty useless if it was something that a real ninja--former one or not--designed. They'd have gotten caught up in their own clothing if it had come to a real fight."

"True," Ino replies, "but, like, it's not as if the writer has to have all that much to do with the costumes. The actual _writing_ of the play was pretty clever."

"I guess so." Sakura shrugs and changes the subject. "Where do you want to go for supper?"

Ino's grin says she knows why Sakura's changed the subject but she just shrugs back at her. "Nothing with yakitori," Ino says, "but other than that, I'm good with anywhere. You hear of any new places opening up lately? Wasn't there one by the old cabaret in west side?"

Sakura tries to remember if she's seen anything in any of the fliers or newspapers she's gotten lately and if she's heard anything at the hospital. "I think so," she says slowly. "I can't remember what they're supposed to be about though."

"We might as well try," Ino decides abruptly and cuts across the street without warning. 

Sakura almost stumbles as she tries to keep up with Ino. "Geez," she laughs, once she's across the street and has caught up with her friend. Sakura wraps one arm through Ino's to make sure she doesn't do that again. "Someone's hungry."

"Maybe," Ino laughs. "But can you blame me? We spent so long shopping this morning that we missed lunch!"

"I seem to remember days when you were always on diets," Sakura comments teasingly, even though once upon a time, she'd been know better. 

"Meh. My parents set me straight about that one quick enough," Ino tells her, tugging her along. Sakura wonders if Ino even knows where she's going but doesn't bother to ask. As long as they find some place to eat, she's good with that. "And Asuma-sensei was an utter bear for proper nutrition _and_ you try being on a team with an Akimichi and see how long you can get away with not eating properly."

"Lucky," Sakura says, smiling slightly. 

"Oh?"

"That you had people around to tell you that," she clarifies, as they turn down another corner. The streets are slowly clearing out now that they're not on the main drag. "My team didn't notice if I pulled stuff like that--or if they noticed, they didn't say anything about it."

Ino looks a bit uncomfortable for a moment then shrugs. "Well," she says, with the air of someone who is picking their words carefully, "I mean, it's not like it's news that, well, Hatake was more interested in training the Uchiha than in paying attention to his other two students, right?"

Sakura has to nod. It's true. She hates it, but she can't rewrite the past. That's how it had been, once upon a time. In training, Sasuke had always gotten more attention. She remembers tying with Ino in the Chuunin exam and then being ignored for a month while Naruto was dumped off on another sensei because Kakashi was too busy with Sasuke.

She remembers how that hurt.

"So," Ino continues, "it's not all that surprising that some things slipped past _his_ nose, and then Naruto is, well..."

"He's a good friend," Sakura defends him, bristling slightly.

"I'm not saying he's not," Ino says quickly. "But, seriously, Forehead, you can't deny that he was more oblivious than ought to be legal at that age."

Sakura grimaces but can't object. "And Sasuke cared only for himself," she says, before Ino can say it. It's easier for her to admit it than for her to hear it which makes very little sense and yet is true nonetheless. 

"Yeah." Ino is silent for a moment. "Well, at least you had me."

"Ego, much?" Sakura rolls her eyes, laughing a bit. "You're seriously still on about that? We weren't even talking at that age!"

"Um," Ino says, "excuse me, but I seem to remember rushing in to save your sorry ass in a certain forest. You know, complete with fixing the god awful haircut you'd given yourself. That sounds like you still had me."

"My hero," Sakura says, leaning into Ino a little. "And then we insulted each other and you were all up in arms over the fact that I'd hugged Sasuke."

"Well, duh," Ino replies, "he clearly wasn't good enough for you."

"Now _that_ ," Sakura says, shoving playfully at Ino, "is blatantly rewriting the past, Pig." 

The streets around them are quieter, hushed in expectation of something, which Sakura tells herself she's being silly to think that. She tries to remember the newspaper ad she's seen. "I think it's a little bit further," she says, "maybe down that next turn?"

"Are you sure?" Ino asks, frowning a little. "Maybe we should get up on the roofs to see where we're going. Not going to lie--I rarely come down this way. We're way too close to the abandoned sector for anyone to feel really comfortable talking or doing business here."

"I'm sure we're close," Sakura insists, not wanting to give in too quick. "We can't be all that far." 

"Okay," Ino says, "but if you're wrong, I'm going to lord it over you for the rest of the day-- _Naruto?_ "

Sakura stops dead as Naruto and Kakashi appear in a swirl of leaves just ahead of them. Her grip on Ino's arm tightens. 

"Easy," Ino murmurs quietly, "don't cut off my circulation, Forehead."

Flushing a little, Sakura loosens her grip but doesn't let go. Sakura's eyes narrow. She's told Naruto she doesn't want to talk to Kakashi and now… now he's brought him right to her.

She can't help but feel a little betrayed by that though it doesn't change the fact that her stomach is doing somersaults in her throat (or so it feels like, since that's physically impossible) and her throat's gone dry with fear. Kakashi would be in his right to hate her.

Kakashi is wearing nothing but a pair of drawstring pants with his mask and hitae-ate. His expression is entirely unreadable, even to her, and she knows that means he's upset. 

Sakura just doesn't know if that means he's upset because of being brought against his will to see her or--or what. She doesn't know what she hopes he's upset about either.

"What's this about, Naruto?" Ino demands, shaking free of Sakura enough to step in front of her. 

"Ino," Sakura hisses, "you don't have to hide me. I can deal."

Ino ignores her and Sakura can feel her temper starting to build. 

"Ino-chan," Naruto says, his blue eyes serious. "Don't you think they ought to talk?"

"No." Ino's response comes quick and flatly. "I think Hatake needs to get the fuck over his issues and then decide what the hell he wants to do. I think Sakura did the right thing."

Sakura winces. Ino rarely swears. That makes Sakura think there's more going on here than just protecting her from her ex. "Ino," Sakura says, her voice quiet. "What's wrong?"

"Shush," Ino says over her shoulder.

"Don't shush me!" Sakura flares. "You--"

Ino cuts her off. "I'm waiting for an explanation, Naruto."

Naruto frowns at Ino, then at Sakura. "I think," he says stubbornly, "that talking now will make it easier for them later. You're not the only one who cares about Sakura-chan, Ino-chan."

Ino tosses her head. "I'm the one who knows best--do you even _know_ what's wrong with _him_?"

"Enough," Kakashi says. 

Sakura swallows hard as Ino and Naruto's bickering falls abruptly silent. That's not Kakashi's voice. She knows his voice, she's heard it for years under all sorts of emotions and yet she's never heard him sound the way he has with that one word. Goosebumps track down her arms like little harbingers of doom. 

_What's wrong with Kakashi?_ she wonders. 

"Ino," Sakura says, with a glance at Naruto's wide eyes and Kakashi's blank expression and Ino's back, which is screaming loud and clear that Ino is ready to fight if it comes to that. "I think we should just--go. Supper, you know? And we can talk to Naruto and Kakashi… some other time."

 _Forehead,_ Ino's voice whispers in her mind. _Calm down for a sec._

Sakura bristles--she hates it when Ino talks inside her head--then realizes what that's got to mean. Ino's got her shields down and is picking up thoughts. 

What is Ino picking up from Kakashi? 

She knows that something has changed: Ino's never been Kakashi's greatest fan but this raging protector routine is new. Sakura doesn't like it.

But she doesn't like the way Kakashi is staring at them either. His expression is blank but his one visible eye is hard with hatred as he glares at Ino.

Is he mad because Ino is blatantly ignoring his right to privacy in his own mind? 

Sakura can't really blame him for that--she's voiced the same complain to Ino before--but she _really_ doesn't like the look on his face. She steps in front of Ino, which snaps Kakashi's attention away from Ino and onto her. 

"Sakura," he says, his voice still sounding… _off_.

 _What are you doing?_ Ino's voice asks.

 _Protecting you,_ Sakura thinks back and stares stubbornly at Kakashi. Her worry for him is hidden under a resolute expression. If he attacks Ino, Sakura will attack him.

Because if Ino is attacked, they have no way to stop her from bleeding to death. And Ino has never cared about herself when it comes to protecting someone she loves.

Sakura thinks of something and swallows. She doesn't like it but she's done harder things. This is just more of the same. "Naruto," Sakura says, "maybe you're right."

Naruto blinks. Kakashi blinks. She can feel Ino's questioning stare on the back of her head. 

"Sakura-chan?"

"I think," she says, "that maybe I ought to talk to Kakashi. You're right. I should have done this before. You think you can look after Ino for me so I can get a bit of privacy?"

_I don't need a keeper, Sakura!_

_Shut up,_ Sakura thinks sharply, unsurprised that Ino has followed the thoughts that have led to her making this decision. _I'm not giving you a keeper! I'm giving you time to figure out what's wrong with him. He doesn't sound like that, he doesn't look at you like that. It's all wrong and I want to know why without you dying because of my decision to break up with him_.

 _Fine._ Ino's voice is sulky and grudging, but Sakura knows she can trust that acceptance. Ino shifts behind her and Sakura guesses that Ino is crossing her arms while she snaps out, "Naruto, get your ass over here."

Naruto looks between Sakura and Kakashi warily, like he's not sure that he's done the right thing, but it's far too late for him to be changing his mind now, Sakura knows. "Sakura-chan," he begins.

"I'll be fine," she says.

He mutters something to Kakashi that Sakura suspects is a threat and Sakura doesn't try to hear it. She doesn't want to know. She wonders what Naruto thinks about Kakashi and the way he's acting. Naruto isn't treating him the way he usually does. 

Sakura isn't sure if that's her fault too.

"Alright," Naruto says, once Kakashi has murmured something too low to make out. Naruto shoves his hands into his pockets and slouches over to them. "Ino-chan, where did you want to go?"

"We're looking for a restaurant," Ino says, and then leaps up onto the rooftops. _Watch out, Forehead._

 _I will._ Sakura promises, though she thinks that Ino is worrying too much. Kakashi's never hurt her, except with Rin, and even then, that's indirect. Sakura _knows_ that. 

"Ino-chan!" yelps Naruto, who quickly follows Ino up onto the roof.

Sakura crosses her arms over her chest, feeling cold in a way that's got nothing to do with the temperature, now that she's alone with Kakashi. "Kakashi," she says. 

"Not Hatake?" he asks, and his voice is low and closer to what she's used to. He's relaxed a bit, now that the other two are gone, she thinks uneasily.

Was the strange voice a ploy to get her alone? She hopes not. Maybe he's just relaxed because their hostile audience has gone and she can't blame him for that. Not even when Sakura knows they're still around--Ino wouldn't go far, and is likely monitoring Kakashi's thoughts right this second; Sakura spares a moment to wonder what her friend has done to Naruto to make him go along with that, then focuses on Kakashi. "I've never called you Hatake," she says, because that's the truth. "Why should I start now?" 

"To put distance between us?"

"Maybe," Sakura says as her stomach flips unpleasantly, "but I think I did enough of that already."

His face darkens. "What I don't understand," he says, "is why. I think I'm owed an explanation for that, Sakura. You could have asked me about Rin. Why didn't you?"

The name lingers on the air between them and Sakura shivers then tells herself it's just from the breeze, which is taking on a cooler cast as evening crawls closer. 

"I know," she says quietly, unflinchingly. "I considered that. You were gone for weeks. Even though I wrote the note while upset, I had plenty of time to think about my options and choices and to go take that note back. I didn't."

"Then explain it to me," he says. "Don't I deserve that much? Your note said you didn't want to be a replacement for Rin. What have I done to make you think you _are_ one?"

Sakura bites her lip. She doesn't want to explain it to him. She doesn't feel like she's got to--that he should just accept it, but she knows that's not how it works and that she's the one being unreasonable. "I decided not to ask," she says finally, "because even if you told the truth, I didn't know if I'd be able to trust it."

"That makes _no sense_." The violent hate in Kakashi's eye has faded to something she can understand: weariness and pain. 

It's awful knowing she's the one that's made him wear that expression.

"It's not about you," she says, forcing herself to speak clearly, without mumbling. It's hard. "Which sounds like every bad breakup note ever, but it's about me. If I'd asked and you told me the truth, I didn't think I'd believe it. If you'd told a lie, I'd know about it and mistrust it from the start."

"You're right," he says, "that does sound like a bad break up note. Which is what you did. I thought there was more trust between us than that."

That hurts. The pain she feels is matched by the pain on his face. Maybe she should have been strong enough to give him a chance. Her throat tightens and she has to swallow several times before finding a way to keep speaking. "I've spent my life," she says quietly, "being second-best in the eyes of the ones I love the best."

"Sasuke."

Sakura nods. "He's the biggest one," she admits, lifting her head to stare him in the eye. "I decided that this time, rather than pining for years and holding on past reasonable hope, to break it off myself. I think..."

"You think what?" he asks, his voice soft and silky. For a brief moment she wishes she could revel in it but she's given that up and so she can't. 

"This time," Sakura says, after steeling her nerve, "that I deserve someone who loves me first. Not second. Not as a replacement. Someone who I can trust to put me first when it comes to their heart. I've learned that I can't stay in a situation where I'm hurting myself. So I got out early this time."

Even now, she's not sure that was a mistake. She never wants to go through what she put herself through with Sasuke ever again. It feels like she's gutted herself and yet… now she feels like she's on solid ground.

"Rin's _dead_ ," he says vehemently. "She's been dead for--for years. I don't… understand. Do you think people can't... can't put people first twice in their lives? It was her, once upon a time." He stares at her intently. "It's you now."

Sakura looks away. "I believe you believe that," she says, letting her breath out in a sigh. "But I can't. That's a fault of mine, not yours. I didn't _want_ to break up."

"Can't we work this out?" Kakashi says and she can tell he's frowning at her. "Or are you just going to run from me on a maybe?" 

She flushes because that's true enough to be ugly. "I can't stand to be a replacement again," she whispers. "I'm scared that if we try, that's what will happen. Some of your friends think I am." 

"They don't matter," he says, his voice a growl. "They've no right to be telling you things like this and sticking their noses in where they don't belong."

"I think they did," she replies softly. "Even though it hurts. They were trying to do the right thing."

"By hurting both of us?" 

"Yes," she says, wishing her voice didn't shake quite so bad. "Because by letting me know… we can--we can end this before it gets to be too complicated and messy."

"This isn't messy enough for you?" his voice is incredulous.

"This way," she says, "we'll get time apart. Kakashi, I…I don't _want_ this to be forever. But I think... I think that we need to think about this on our own. While being separate, just for a while. _Please_."

"It's your decision," he says, with something that sounds like desperation touching his voice. She tells herself to not be silly: she's clearly hearing what she wants to hear in his voice. "You left me."

Tears sting her eyes but she doesn't let them fall. "I know," she says. "It's not your fault. Not even the fact that you loved someone before me is your fault. It's just… "

"You can't trust me."

"Yeah," she replies. "And that's… that's all me. Nothing to do with you. I'm… I'm considering my feelings. I didn't _want_ to say good-bye." 

His hands are suddenly on her shoulders and she shivers. Sakura can't bring herself to pull away, even as she stares steadily at his chest and refuses to look up. "What are you considering?" he murmurs, right in her ear.

"That I love you," she says softly. It seems more intimate when she's a mere six inches, if that, from his chest. "That I was happy. That I want to be happy again and that this isn't going to work unless I can trust you."

"You can _always_ trust me."

"No," she replies, shaking his hands off her shoulders. "I wish I could."

"I don't understand why you can't."

He's no longer touching her, but he's still far too close to her. She shivers again because of him. She wants him.

She tells herself that she can't have him and to just deal with that as a fact of her life. It's hard though. "I don't know how to explain it," she says. "Maybe your friends would get it." 

He's silent for a moment that stretches unbearably. "Who told you about Rin?" he asks. 

"Kurenai-sensei," she says, "she said 'at least I don't look like her' and Genma-san and Raidou-san talked about how you're into medics."

Kakashi's breath lets out sharply. "And that was enough for you to lose your trust in me?"

She swallows hard and tells the final bits that she hasn't wanted to tell him. "You said her name," Sakura says, "while I was in bed with you."

He freezes.

"I asked Ino to find out who she was," Sakura says. "I was worried you were cheating on me. She told me you weren't but I asked for everything she'd found out."

Sakura thinks of Ino and how Ino smiles and laughs with Temari even though Ino wishes nothing more than for Temari and Shikamaru to break up, and how Ino does nothing to help that along when it would be the easiest thing in the world to do, and Sakura wonders who is the most mature out of all of them.

Definitely not herself, Sakura thinks, a little ruefully. She's made a mess of this.

"Ino hates me," Kakashi says, "and you believed what she said."

"Rin was a medical ninja," Sakura says, keeping her voice steady. "She was on your team. She died due to chakra poisoning and you loved her. Is any of that a lie? That's what Ino told me."

He says nothing and she knows it wasn't.

"She glares at me," Kakashi's voice sounds off-kilter again and _wrong_. Sakura doesn't dare look up. She doesn't want to see hate in his face. 

"Yes," Sakura agrees. "Because she's my friend, not yours, and so she's looking out for me the best way she knows how. Just like how your friends looked out for you the best way _they_ knew how. It's not personal that she glares at you: she would glare at anyone in your position connected to me."

It's true. Ino is vicious when it comes to protecting her friends. Some days Sakura desperately appreciates that and other days... well, she can work around it. When it comes to Ino, she always knows she's loved and that helps soothe her frustration with Ino's manner. 

"It doesn't matter," she says, after the space of five heartbeats goes by and Kakashi says nothing. "She won't attack you if you don't attack her. I just don't want you starting anything with her."

"She'd keep you away from me," Kakashi says, "and I'm supposed to just let her?"

Sakura squeezes her eyes shut before opening them and forcing herself to look up. "For now?" They're so close that there's only a few inches between them. She doesn't know who moved closer. "Yes. I need time, Kakashi. And you… I think you do to. I--after all of this, I wouldn't blame you if I was too much of a hassle for you to want around."

He studies her and then presses a kiss to her forehead. "I'll talk to my friends," he says, "and try to understand where they came from on this. After that… I want to talk to you again. 

Sakura can't pretend that she doesn't want to talk to him again. "Yes," she says. "Call me. Don't just--show up though, okay?"

"I'll remember," he says, and steps away from her.

She feels lonely, which is ridiculous. "Ino," she calls, raising her voice. "I want to go now." 

Ino and Naruto land on the ground behind her. "Hey," Ino says, all light-hearted sounding. "We found the restaurant, Forehead. We took a wrong turn a ways back."

There's an edge under Ino's voice that Sakura needs to know about. _What did you find?_ she asks.

 _I'll tell you later._ In contrast to the bright voice Ino is speaking with, her mind's voice is abrupt and closed off. 

Sakura doesn't like that. Not when her conversation with Kakashi has gone better than she's had any right to expect.

"Naruto," she says, because Kakashi has gone silent now that the others are back. "Thanks for looking after Ino. Would you look after Kakashi too?"

"Uh--sure, Sakura-chan," he sounds hesitant and she can't really blame him. "Are you going to be okay?"

"I'll be fine," she says, letting out a breath and thinking that maybe she even means it. "I've grown up, after all."

Naruto laughs uneasily and Ino and Kakashi make no noise at all. She glances up at Kakashi and is unsurprised, but dismayed, to see him staring over her at where Ino must be standing, with a glare that could melt rocks.

Sakura pokes him in the stomach. "Don't," she says, "please. I'll talk to you again."

He looks down at her. "I'll hold you to that," he tells her and then he's gone. Naruto disappears a second after.

Sakura sighs, her shoulders slumping. 

Ino hugs her from behind. "You did good, Forehead," Ino murmurs. 

"Let's go home," Sakura says quietly. "I don't want to go to the restaurant anymore."

* * *


	6. Espressivo

* * *

Kakashi flings himself over rooftops recklessly, at incredible speeds, trusting to years and years worth of experience to keep him from falling even when he isn't paying attention to his surroundings. His head reels, his sight warped and the wind against his bare chest feels far too cold for what the temperature is.

He doesn't know what to make of Sakura's words. They ring, dancing around his thoughts as he thinks himself in circles, and he doesn't understand.

Oh, he understands her point of view, at least some what now and while it's disappointing--horribly so--he knows her and can see how she got to her conclusions. 

Agreeing with them is a different matter but he's going to at least figure out a few things before talking to her again. Kakashi wishes he could remember his dreams. Why would he have been dreaming about Rin? Had it been in the way that Sakura had implied? Or had it been a nightmare mitigated only by Sakura's presence and so the cry was softened?

He doesn't know.

He's not sure there's a way to find out either. Short of letting a Yamanaka rifle through his mind that is and he's not keen on that.

The small clearing, with the stone that's been both an ache and a comfort over the years comes into view. Kakashi stops, just outside of the clearing, and leans against a tree. The bark is rough on his skin and he realizes that his feet are not particularly impressed that he's been running about without sandals. 

The minor pains are almost soothing. They help to ground him and he needs it. 

Rin sits on the stone, her legs crossed as she balances there. Her elbows rest on her knees. She looks thoughtful as she studies the ground and gives no indication that she's noticed him or not. 

He watches her, his breathing harsh and heavy to his ears and wonders what he's supposed to do.

"That," he says, bewildered, "wasn't all me."

It's ridiculous, that he hopes for an answer from her. When he thinks back over the conversation, he can remember everything he and Sakura said, but what happened before and after that while Naruto and Ino--

His anger swells, uncontrollable, and he staggers under the force of it before forcing himself to complete his thought:

Ino had also been there.

"What's wrong with me?" he murmurs, staring at his hands. They're shaking with rage that he's barely got a cap on. 

There's something in him that would desperately like to go and do--do something he's not going to think about because he _won't_ do it and that's it.

Rin's arms, small and still those of a child, wrap around his waist. 

"When did you move?" he asks because he hadn't noticed. She doesn't answer and he closes his eyes and pretends she's real. 

If he's going mad, which he must be, he thinks that this is the best part of it. For a little while, he's got Rin back, even while everything else in his life is falling apart.

He stirs. "Do you think there's a chance Sakura and I can figure this all out?" he asks in a voice that only she'll be able to hear.

Kakashi doesn't hear her answer but he knows when she gives one--she nods, the movement enough for him to feel it through her embrace. He sighs. That's a comfort. "I'm not very good at that sort of thing," he says, "and neither is she."

Which, he thinks, is an understatement.

A few moments later he asks another question. "Do you know what's wrong with me, Rin?"

She lets him go and he watches as she steps back a few feet. Her face is serious and determined. 

"What do you know?" he asks her, unsettled by her actions and wishing that--that this was even real, because it can't be real.

It _can't_ be.

Rin smiles, but it's a sad smile. She lifts her hands up and places them, pressed together, under her right ear, like she's sleeping. Then she looks at him, a demand in her eyes.

"I know," he says. "I do need sleep. But do you really think I can?"

What he doesn't ask but wishes he dared was 'will this make more sense in the morning'? 

His anger doesn't surge at that and Kakashi breathes a sigh of relief. Surely there's time enough for him to figure out what is his problem with Sakura's friend--he doesn't dare think her name and call the rage back--once he's rested, Kakashi thinks. He's too tired to come to the proper conclusions anyway.

Rin smiles at him.

"Why aren't you talking?" he asks her curiously. "You said hello to me before."

She shrugs at him, her lips pursed like she's at a loss for how to explain it. Then, after a second, Rin just shakes her head. 

Kakashi shakes his. "Madness," he murmurs, then holds his hand out to her. He remembers fuzzily that he's supposed to report anything out of the ordinary to Hokage-sama.

But that had been to do with the illness not with his own personal demons, he thinks. "Come on, Rin," he says, "let's go home and rest. You'll watch out for me, won't you?"

Her hand in his is an impossibility but when she wraps her fingers around his, he's sure he can feel them. She tugs him over to the stone and kneels down, still holding his hand. Kakashi follows.

"Hey," he says quietly, once he's on his knees. "Minato-sensei, Obito, things are pretty complicated right now. But... but don't worry about me, Rin's looking after everything. You know that she always cared more about keeping me healthy than I did..."

He trails off for a long moment before getting up. "Good bye," he says, then shakes his head. "I'm tired," he explains a bit ruefully. "Good night."

Then he turns away from the stone, Rin still a silent but comforting presence beside him. He looks down at her. "Can you keep up with me?" he asks. "I'm going to go fast."

She makes a face at him, as if to say that of _course_ she can keep up with him and what does he take her for? Kakashi, despite everything, feels a little lighter at the laughter in her eyes.

"Alright," he says, "ready, set--go!"

He goes so fast that his body is little more than a blur as he flies out of the clearing and then up onto the roofs. There's only one more day until he's got to report to Hokage-sama and head out on a mission and he suspects that he's going to be spending most of that in sleep.

But then, he thinks, as he darts from rooftop to rooftop, there are far worse things he could be doing and these last two days have been an exercise in proving that. 

He's so occupied in his thoughts that he finds himself passing by Sakura's apartment automatically and slowing. He can spot her windows from here and he watches as Sakura walks past the window in her kitchen. 

Rin tugs at his hand and he looks at her. Her eyes are worried and she's frowning at him. He realizes that he's being a bit of a stalker and turns to go when Ino walks past the open window sipping from a cup and he staggers, going to his knees as the rage swamps him.

_This isn't me,_ he thinks as he struggles to find some measure of control against the heaving, rushing fury. _This isn't my anger._

Whose is it then? He knows his anger and his is cold.

This is warm.

Rin's tug on his hand becomes a lifeline as he forces himself to stumble after her, one foot in front of the other, over and over until he's breathing just a little easier and the rage as subsided back under the surface of his skin. 

"What's going on?" he asks her again. 

She lowers her eyes and shakes her head. Her grip on his hand tightens. Kakashi lets his breath sharply and follows as she leads the way, no longer at their breakneck pace because he's certain that if he tries that, he'll collapse for real and somehow, he suspects, she knows that.

The further they get from Sakura's apartment, the better he feels. Better, he thinks, being relative but the fact remains that the rage quiets and tucks itself away and he can focus more on the pain of the last few days--and there's enough pain to go around, really. He doesn't understand why his friends would hurt him in the name of looking out for him.

He wonders if he would understand it had he been more social as a younger man. He's getting too old for this. 

As Kakashi approaches his apartment he realizes that Naruto is leaning against the door. He looks worried about something and Kakashi realizes that, perhaps, just disappearing hadn't been the best of plans.

"Didn't Sakura tell you to make sure I got back?" Kakashi asks, coming to a stop in front of Naruto.

Naruto pushes himself away from the door. "I knew where you were," he says, "I kept an eye out on you."

Kakashi doesn't need to ask how: Naruto is still as casual and careless with his chakra as he's always been and he can get away with strewing kage bunshin around the village and maintaining them without ever breaking a sweat. 

"So you just left me there?" 

Blue eyes narrow at him and he's glad that they're so obviously Naruto's because he can feel the rage bubble for a second, reminded of someone else's eyes. "Who am I to drag someone away from there?" Naruto asks. "You were busy."

Kakashi wonders what Naruto saw him doing there. He doesn't ask. Naruto's right that there's a time to drag a companion back to their bed but while they're at the stone isn't one of them, unless they collapse.

He's close to that point but he can and does appreciate the way Naruto has given him as much privacy as he could. "Thank you," he says, and brushes by him, realizing that the doors aren't locked for the first time. 

With a soft noise of dismay, he enters his apartment and is unsurprised when Naruto follows him. "Planning to stay the night?" he drawls and heads to the fridge. He takes out a water bottle. He needs to eat but Kakashi knows if he tries to eat anything while so wrung out that he'll just make himself ill. He needs sleep more.

The water is cold as it trickles down his throat and, after a moment's contemplation, he tosses another bottle at Naruto. 

"Yeah," Naruto says, a little bit defiantly as he catches the bottle. "You've been weird, Kakashi-sensei."

He wants to argue that. Scathingly point out that he's been dumped and has had very little rest since getting back from a mission and has eaten only once in that that time. That would make anyone act weird. Kakashi just drinks deeply from the bottle and says nothing.

Weird.

That's as good a description as any for what's been going on. He _hasn't_ been himself, though he feels almost normal right now. It's comforting to know that he still can. Rin leans against the counter by him and smiles up at him. Kakashi knows what she wants and runs his free hand through his hair.

"Stay then," he says, though he hates having company over and he's only never minded if it's Sakura but that's an entirely different matter. "Take the couch." Which was already prepared with blankets and a pillow. "I'll be in my room."

"Kakashi-sensei," Naruto says, "do you know what's wrong? Shouldn't you go to the old lady and see if she can help you?"

It's on the tip of Kakashi's tongue to mention that he's already been before the 'old lady' and that his tests came up clean. He doesn't though, because it is true that just because they'd come up clean _then_ doesn't mean they'd come up clean _now_. "I'll think about it," he says and wonders if Naruto is going to drag him off somewhere else now. "And no, I don't know what's going on."

Which is true on so many levels that if he were the crying sort, Kakashi wryly thinks that he'd be weeping into a pillow. As he's not, he just finishes off his water and tosses the empty bottle in the garbage. 

"You didn't get hurt on your mission, did you?"

Kakashi shakes his head. "Just a scratch," he says, glancing down at his arm and realizes for the first time that it has already healed so seamlessly that it's like it never happened. "It's clean."

"Alright," Naruto sighs, sounding unhappy.

Kakashi doesn't blame him.

If Naruto is unhappy, that's nothing compared to how Kakashi feels and he thinks that's fair, in this world where nothing has been fair lately. "Just go to sleep," Kakashi says, tossing the words over his shoulder. "And maybe when I wake up you'll be done playing nursemaid."

"I'm not!" Naruto protests with indignation, right on cue, and it means that Kakashi is smiling slightly under the mask as he heads into his room. Rin trails him in and despite the way he really and truly does hate people staring at his face, he gets rid of the hitae-ate and his mask. He's slept in both of them before, but he's far too tired to put up with anything that keeps him from sleeping as deeply as possible. 

He stretches, then leans against the door, his hands flying through a few seals before he presses his fingers against the door frame. There's the soft hum of jutsu becoming active. Kakashi turns, pleased with his work, and finds Rin frowning at him.

"Don't give me that," he says. "It won't keep him out. It will just let me know if he tries to come in."

Rin's frown eases and he considers her as he pulls back the blankets on his bed and crawls in. "Are you going to sleep?" he asks drowsily.

He doesn't see her shake her head, though he feels her hand when she rests it against his forehead, but then Kakashi is tumbling down the long fall to sleep and everything goes dark.

* * *

His breath is harsh in his ears and he pauses, taking a few seconds to reorient himself and just catch his breath. It's the air here, he knows, that makes him feel like he's out of shape. It's hot and muggy and so humid that each breath feels like he's inhaling water.

His team is arrayed behind him. He's playing point. Kakashi glances at them to make sure they're all doing as well as possible. Sweat beads down his chest, his back, the hollows of his knees and armpits, down his neck. It's disgusting and worse--they've seen no sign of their target.

They'd been hired to find a few missing-nin and eliminate them. Which, he thinks, so far has been an entirely futile endeavor. If they're here, and the village they'd checked out that morning had confirmed sightings of missing nin, then the enemy had the home-ground advantage. 

_They can have it,_ Kakashi thinks as he and his team advance like a well oiled machine. The area was swampy, in all sorts of greens and browns, and reeking heavily of rot while vegetation grows around them in riotous confusion. 

There's more flowers here than he's ever seen before.

Most of them, he's pretty sure, are poisonous. 

That's why all of them are carrying enough rations to last for two weeks. If they can't find the target in that time, they'll head back to Konoha to restock and then head back out--because they don't get paid if they can't find the enemy.

Kakashi swats a gnat the size of his hand away from him and breaths carefully through his mask. "Keep moving," he says, and pretends he doesn't feel like moaning the way they do. If they can't see that he's as tired as they are then they'll push themselves further and harder with less complaints. "We've got another six hours before we can break for the night."

He doesn't mention the fact that they're going to have a hassle and a half in finding a dry place to sleep. Half swamp-half rainforest, he already hates this place and they've been here for maybe four hours. 

Summoning his dogs would be useless and he's loathe to inflict this place on them, even if it might give them an edge in locating their target. He thinks of what Sakura would say if she heard him now--he's whining definitely--and has to conceal a smile.

Then he leaps to the next tree, as silent as a shadow and deadlier than the flowers. His team follows after, as quiet as he is, and they continue their search.

* * *

Kakashi turns and shifts restlessly in his sleep, flinging one hand up to cover his eyes as he sweats.

Rin watches him, an expression of utmost concentration on her face.

* * *

They've been here for four days now and he dreams longingly of dry ground and dry heat and a breath of air that doesn't feel like he's drinking from a pool of dirty water. 

Kakashi shakes his head and creeps forward. They've found indications of human habitation and now they're all on full alert as they make their way from tree to tree, inching around the giant trunks and stepping carefully from branch to branch as they make their way through the trees. 

They don't even know how many there are. 

But then, that's why this is an S-ranked mission, and they'll get paid very well for it, assuming that they live. Kakashi tells himself to stop brooding on things that are negative and ignores the tiny thought that it's just being practical. After all, S-ranked missions have the highest rate of death for a reason.

_Not on my watch,_ he thinks firmly and then freezes as he spots a shinobi, not one of his team, through the foliage. The man is wide and tall and built like he could take down buildings with the brush of his hand. 

Which, Kakashi thinks, is pretty close to the truth. He recognizes this man from the bingo book and swears inwardly. This battle isn't going to be an easy one. They don't have a poison specialist with them and despite the man's form and stance, which is close to that of a taijutsu master, Kakashi can remember the words in the book quite clearly.

This man is a poison specialist with a flair for human experimentation.

Like Orochimaru had been, Kakashi thinks, and tells himself that this man can't be as strong as Orochimaru, that he's got a better chance here and now.

Maybe that's even the truth but they never get the chance to see.

Kakashi collapses like a puppet with cut strings as all around him, his team falls one by one, and the last thing he remembers is wondering what had hit them, and then... nothing.

He's never been defeated so easily before. Failure is bitter.

* * *

Rin's eyes spark with emotion as sweat and tears work their way down her face in equal measure. She stands, still as a statue, beside Kakashi's bed and her gaze never leaves Kakashi's face. 

Her face is anguished.

Kakashi's is worse.

* * *

Everything after his capture is fuzzy despite the way that he feels like he should and is supposed to and _has_ to remember something that's desperately important... he can't.

Kakashi realizes he's dreaming, in order to be thinking like that.

The memories still linger just out of touch. He writhes on his bed, face agonized, and fingers digging into the mattress with enough force to rip the sheets.

They failed their mission, the memories insist, but what happened after that?

(He'd reported that he'd succeeded in the mission to Tsunade-sama.)

Pain, sharp as a piece of glass, that stings like someone has dropped salt in his wounds, forces this thoughts onwards and Kakashi fumbles for an answer that he can make sense of. 

(How was a mission that was a failure... a success?)

He doesn't remember. He remembers them collapsing. Kakashi remembers watching as was carried past him, limp and lifeless except for their breathing, as the man built like an ox brought them one by one to his lair.

Kakashi remembers dark walls and icy metal and Kakashi remembers pain and blood and...

His body curls in on itself, resisting the need to find out more about what had happened, and in his sleep he makes a noise like a plea. He doesn't want to remember it.

(But how did they succeed?)

He can't think. He doesn't know. 

He remembers something about his teammates being incompatible and their screams as they are forced to see if they can be anyway.

He remembers screaming for them, when their voices died, and then he remembers...

Joyous laughter filling the air as his body was wracked with pain and agony, and the feel of something else, something darker and crueler curling around his thoughts and then he wasn't alone and he wasn't ever going to be alone.

(But that doesn't make sense.)

Kakashi remembers stepping over the bodies of his team, he remembers the way that their eyes were unseeing and empty and peculiarly colourless when in life they'd been all sorts of colours. Blue and green and browns, nothing unusual. 

But they had no colour left to them now. 

He remembers the way their hair had gone as white as his and how their had limbs shifted, sliding bonelessly when he'd given into faint curiosity and nudged them. Kakashi remembers staring down at them and not understanding anything.

(How had they gotten back to Konoha?)

He remembers leaving, his team around him, and all of them silent as they made their way out of the swamp and then picking up the pace as they ran, faster and faster towards Konoha and safety.

Kakashi remembers the laughter that lingered in his ears for the first half of the trip. That and the feeling of being embraced by something he can't see.

It doesn't, hasn't, bothered him.

(Why not?) 

He remembers orders given in a low voice before they leave but can't remember their content. Just that it was important and it was bad and it was something to do with everything else that he can't remember.

* * *

Rin sways on her feet, looking exhausted and past exhausted, and still her gaze never leaves Kakashi's face. Her eyes are painfully bright and her hands are clenched in front of her as she braces herself against the bed.

She can no longer stand on her own.

Kakashi tosses and turns, caught in a nightmare that had been real.

* * *

(What was truth and what was a lie?)

The journey back to Konoha passes in a flash, a blink, of an eye, and the whole way there his teammates are silent and that's unusual but he's fine with that because there's the whisper in his head that reminds him of his orders, over and over, the murmur and the rage and what he's supposed to do.

(What is he supposed to do?)

He can't remember.

* * *

Kakashi wakes with a gasp, a full ten hours after going to bed, in time to see Rin's ghost waver and fade even as he reaches out for her. 

Memories scatter like shattered glass at the sudden sense of loss he feels as he stares at the place where she'd stood. 

He's alone.

Kakashi shivers as the rage murmurs.

He can't remember his dreams.

* * *

"Lost the connection," a girl says, sounding exhausted. "We're going to have to move this up. You weren't kidding about the progression."

"I told you, didn't I?" He leans against the girl's bed and crosses his arms.

Both of them stare at the monitor that shows Hatake sitting in bed looking bereft.

* * *


	7. Interlude

* * *

Ino wakes abruptly, all at once, and finds herself stiff and chill to the touch. She's more tired than she'd been last night, but that's not a surprise to her.

 _Hey,_ she thinks down the link, _I'm going to need something to work with, you know?_

There's the feel of someone grumbling on the far end but then the far more welcome surge of energy flushes through the link and into her. She's still stiff, but no longer cool to the touch and her exhaustion, well...

She's had worse to deal with. 

Stretching takes care of the stiffness and once Ino's finished with that, she saunters into Sakura's room. Sakura is a heap of blankets and tangled hair and the flash of pale legs this early in the morning. She'll never tell Sakura that, even in her sleep, she's reaching out for someone.

Ino can guess who and that makes her wrinkle her nose a bit. Really, the timing has sucked all around on this matter. Before she can think too deeply on that--what use is brooding at this stage?--she leans over and shakes Sakura's shoulder.

Sakura blinks at her, all sleepy green eyes and tousled pink hair, and Ino finds herself smiling. "Get up, Forehead," she says, "you've got work today."

So does she.

"Ugh." Sakura's moan is expressive enough that Ino gives into the urge to giggle. "Five more minutes."

"Sorry," Ino says, not sounding very sorry at all. She drops their journal on the bed, right by Sakura's head and smiles when Sakura wraps one hand around it. The journal is her gamble, in case things go seriously wrong. But for Sakura, she thinks, the journal is another connection between them. "But seriously, you've got to get up. Don't you have that heart surgery today? Scheduled for seven?"

With a sigh, Sakura sits up. Ino plops herself down on the bed without an invitation and pulls her legs up under her chin. 

"I hate you," Sakura tells her, a faint smile curling at her lips so Ino doesn't take that seriously. She can't, not when Sakura is all but hugging their journal. "What time did you get up?"

Ino shrugs. "Just now," she admits. "But I figured that rather than steal the first shower of the day, I really ought to let you go first since you've got to be more professional than me today."

At least, Ino thinks, as Sakura rolls her eyes and mutters something about how Ino is oh so kind really, that sounds good. It's not true and another person might have issues with lying to their best friend, but Ino has long since given up trying to figure out how guilty she's supposed to feel on any particular day.

Lies are her trade, after all.

And in this case, she's lying for a relatively minor thing. Sakura getting the first shower isn't a big deal.

"Soooo," Ino says, drawling the word in a way that never fails to make Sakura wince. "Are you going? I'll make coffee!" Ino bounces up off the bed, fully awake at ungodly o'clock and knowing she's being a little obnoxious about it.

But Sakura expects that. So she's being a good friend by living up to her expectations. Ino tells herself that and sometimes lets herself believe it. 

Sakura yawns in response, looking so weary and tired for a second when the pretence of happiness slides off her face, that Ino feels a pang for her friend.

"I'm going," Sakura says, swinging her legs off the bed and reaching for her hairbrush. "You'd better make the coffee the way I like it, Pig."

"Maybe the second pot," Ino teases her, with a toss of her head and saunters out of the room to the sound of Sakura's muttering. 

It's not a bad morning, Ino thinks, as she folds up the blankets she's been using to sleep on the couch (it's a good thing she sleeps curled up though, because otherwise she'd never fit) and sets them on one of the cushions before flicking on the TV and checking what the weather is supposed to be.

Behind her, she can hear Sakura making her way to the bathroom. Ino stretches, her arms up behind her head, and then heads to the kitchen. She wasn't kidding about making coffee. 

Once she's got the coffeemaker exactly how Sakura likes it, Ino hits start and then heads back to the living room. The news is talking about a series of inexplicable murders three towns over and Ino contents herself with watching and trying to guess if it had been Konoha who'd done it or if it had been another village's ninja. It's impossible to tell from the sanitized and dramatized, in all the right ways, news. 

It wouldn't do to give the civilians a real idea of what ninja can do. Ino sometimes thinks that if she couldn't be a shinobi of Konoha that playing newscaster could've been fun. They lie, with straight faces, every day.

Ino finds her hairbrush--because she's not going to share one with Sakura, no way--and begins combing the tangles out of her long hair. Behind her she can hear the coffee pot burbling happily. Once her hair is neat and tossed up into a simple ponytail, Ino heads to the kitchen to pour coffee for the both of them. 

Sakura takes hers black, so Ino prepares that one first. Pour and done. Then Ino adds enough sugar to hers to send a child into a sugar rush and a dollop of milk, stirs once, then sips the drink with a sigh. Perfect.

It's maybe a minute after that when Sakura enters the kitchen, dressed for the day, her hair damp and brushed back from her face. "Coffee?" Sakura asks, stepping over to the window to push the curtains back and open the window. 

Ino holds out Sakura's cup. "Coffee," she says, taking a sip from hers. "Quick shower, Forehead."

Sakura shrugs. "There wasn't really a point in lingering today," she says, taking and sipping her drink. "I wasn't in the mood for enjoying it."

"You should try," Ino says, nudging Sakura with her elbow. "I mean, just 'cause of what's happened--that doesn't mean you've got to stop having fun at all."

"I'm not," Sakura replies, elbowing her back as they both lean against the counter. Ino in her over-sized t-shirt and Sakura looking every inch the competent kunoichi. "I went out yesterday, didn't I? And I did have fun at the fabric store and at the play."

Ino outwardly grumbles because, really, all of her attempts to keep Sakura busy and happy had been undone thanks to Hatake and Naruto's brilliant idea and knows that Sakura would notice if she doesn't grumble. 

But it _had_ been a brilliant idea of Naruto's. Ino's kinda proud about that. 

"True," Ino says, "and then you've got work today and you're going to be utterly surrounded by people who think you're perfectly amazing and then you're going to live up to that and that's _got_ to make you happy. Oh," she adds casually, "and then we're going to a movie when you get off."

Sakura glances at her. "A movie?"

"Yup," Ino tells her, like she's had it planned for hours and hasn't just decided. "There's a silly one out about a Genin who gets lost and is found by a tiger princess and together they discover that they've got to work together to save both of their homes."

Sakura splutters. "Where are you finding these things?" she demands, but she's laughing and so Ino counts that as a win. "That's utterly ridiculous!"

"The Genin is adorable," Ino says persuasively. "And it's a timeless tale of forbidden relations between villages!"

"Fine," Sakura says, snickering. "But you're paying."

"Sure, sure," Ino says easily. She doesn't bother pointing out that since she paid for the play yesterday that Sakura really ought to pay for the movie. True to tell, Ino doesn't mind spending her money on things that keep Sakura happy right now. It's not like, Ino figures, that she'd be spending the money on anything better really.

"Ino," Sakura says, after fifteen minutes, once they've each finished their first cups of coffee and are on their second. Sakura looks at her with uneasy green eyes. "Do you think I did the right thing?"

Ino sips her coffee and debates playing dumb about knowing exactly what Sakura means by that. She decides not to because Sakura is one of the few people in the village (the others being Shikamaru, Chouji, and Hokage-sama) who know precisely when she _is_ playing dumb. She doubts Sakura would appreciate it right now.

"I don't know," she admits, and tries to pretend that Sakura's face falling doesn't leave her feeling bad that she doesn't have the right answer. "I mean, I'm not his biggest fan at all, but I never told you to cut him out of your life."

She is so far from being Hatake's fan at the moment that she might as well be in the enemy camp--and Ino knows he sees her that way. But then, her opinion is... coloured.

And by a lot more than just the fact he's hurt Sakura.

Ino stares into her coffee and contemplates the web of lies she's found herself in. It's not fair, she thinks, the way Sakura can make her doubt herself.

"I thought," Sakura says, "that it was for the best because--because I couldn't stand it if it was like Sasuke all over again, you know?"

Ino nods. She does understand that. What Sakura had done to herself over Sasuke had been ugly and vicious and lasted years. For that alone, she thinks, it was a good thing that Naruto had been forced to kill him last year.

(She will never say that to either Sakura or Naruto.)

But if Naruto hadn't killed him... Ino had been considering trying herself. She probably wouldn't have succeeded, which was what had held her back (because Sakura hardly needed that grief) and even if she had managed it, she doesn't think Sakura would have forgiven her for that the way she has with Naruto: Naruto and Sasuke had always been on a collision course that could have ended in death or in reconciliation.

Ino thinks death was the better way.

"But now...," Sakura continues, frowning. "I just... don't know. He didn't seem like he was doing well at all."

Ino tucks away the wince she wants to give before finding an answer for that. Sakura has _no_ idea, she reminds herself. So don't go telling her. Hokage-sama will have your hide if you do. "Well," Ino says contemplatively, like she doesn't want to shriek at the idea of Sakura getting anywhere near Hatake right now, "I think he needs some sleep and to eat before you guys talk again, at the very least. He was running on very little of both--it's no wonder that he was off-kilter last night. Especially if he hadn't had a chance to really think about the fact you had broken things off with him."

Mentally, Ino pats herself on the back for that. It says what she thinks and completely skips over all the really uncomfortable parts.

"Do you think he was replacing me?" Sakura asks her straight out.

Ino decides she doesn't have enough coffee for this. She doesn't think Sakura will let her get up and go get more though. That's too obviously trying to get away from the question. Ino compromises by taking a big gulp of her current cup.

"I mean," Sakura presses on, "you were in his head last night. You'd know that now, right?"

Ino twirls a bit of hair around one finger. The worst part, she thinks, is that what Sakura is saying is nothing but the truth, which is always the hardest thing to argue against. "Yeah," she says, finally. "I was in his head. I'm probably the only one who'd be able to tell you anything."

Sakura looks at her.

Cursing herself for a weak-willed ninny, Ino rolls her eyes. "He's not sure," she says, weaving her way through the truth and what she'd seen last night. She'd known she'd see Rin there but it had been another thing entirely to actually come across her. Rin had been shimmery and filled with a pale light that Ino had been able to see through.

No wonder he thought he was going mad. Ino had been impressed herself.

"He's not sure?"

Ino nods. "He's not. He really _hadn't_ thought about it before you'd broke things off with him. Rin had been his first love--but she'd died years and years ago, you know? He still visits his team at the stone all the time but at the same time... he'd moved on. He still loved her, he'll always love her, but she was gone." Ino finishes her coffee and stares mournfully into the cup, wondering if after this she can get another. "So then he loved you, and that happened pretty slowly, you know? It wasn't like he loved you while you were his snot-nosed Genin--"

"Gee, thanks," Sakura says, her voice heavy with sarcasm.

Ino grins a little. "Sorry," she says lightly. "Anyway, he never really thought of you that way, until you were seventeen-ish, and even then--it took years to really get him to fall. I don't know that he was replacing Rin so much as... you're both similar, but that's just what he likes in a person."

"Do you think I did the wrong thing?" Sakura's voice is uncertain.

"No," Ino says, flatly. She has to struggle a bit to find words to explain her vehemence to Sakura without--saying anything that's the truth. Luckily, Ino's got more than enough practice with that. She can bend the truth with that. "I think it's _very_ good that he's going to have to work all of that out for himself," she says, "and when he does, it'll mean that he's come to the conclusion that he really loves you for you and then you'll be able to move forward as a couple."

Ino contemplates that and decides that's putting a bit too much responsibility on Hatake's shoulders. "Of course," she adds, "that means you'll have to work through your trust problems before you guys can do that too. Think you can do that if he's thinking about if he did or not?"

Sakura relaxes a bit, slumping against her. "I'm so tired of being sad," she murmurs quietly. "I don't know how to trust someone."

Ino runs her fingers through Sakura's hair, not having the heart to push her away. "I know, Forehead," she says, "but it'll make your relationship stronger in the end if you can figure it out."

She knows she's not talking about Sakura's relationship with Hatake with that. Ino's smile twists ruefully for a second. Bad form, she supposes, to talk about one relationship when Sakura thinks they're talking about another. 

Sakura just sighs and snags Ino's coffee cup. "One more cup," Sakura says, "and then I'll have to get going. What are you going to do today?"

"Probably help my parents out at the shop," Ino says easily, trailing Sakura into the kitchen. "Maybe in one of the greenhouses. Dad's been busy lately so he hasn't had the time he's wanted to spend on them."

"I hope they find out what's wrong with you soon," Sakura says as she pours them more coffee. "You're too good to be stuck in the village all the time."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Ino laughs. "But I like to think I keep myself busy here."

And the fact that she's medically bound to stay in the village is useful right now despite being ill having a number of downsides.

Ino glances down at her feet and wriggles them. Thank god, she thinks, for the fact that when Naruto knows a jutsu, he knows it inside and out. 

All too soon, Sakura has to go. Ino hugs her before shoving her out the door. Ino doesn't pretend to herself that Sakura will manage to keep her smile for the whole day, but has to admit that it's nice to know that Sakura left her apartment with a smile.

It's a tiny victory.

And Sakura needs all of those that she can get.

Ino flickers her fingers through the seals to activate the security jutsu on the apartment and then goes for a shower. Half an hour later, smelling like citrus and flowers, she's dressed in a tank top and a skirt with fishnet leggings and her sandals. Her hair, she's braided into two braids down her back. It means that her hair will be wet tonight but Ino figures that's better than fussing with drying it when she's not in the mood.

After doing up the dishes and a tidying the place up--Sakura doesn't expect it of her, but Ino likes cleaning and it would bother her to leave a place when there's a simple mess to clean up--she heads out. Her smile is vibrant and she knows her eyes sparkle with good humour.

Underneath it all, she's ice and steel and willpower. 

Rather than heading towards her parent's shop, like she'd told Sakura, Ino disappears in a cloud of leaves.

She reappears in a dark tunnel. The walls around her are rough-hewn, having been cut back when Konoha had first been built and never smoothed since then. The floor is the only thing that has been levelled. Ino walks on silent feet down the hall. There's no lights to guide her but that's alright: she knows the way.

Anyone who knows this path can get through it without lights. Her braids make a little noise as they brush against her thighs as she walks. Ino ignores that. In some ways, down here, it's better to make noise. Startling another shinobi in here is liable to end in death or pain for the one who didn't announce their presence.

After fifteen minutes, two staircases, and three turns, all in utter darkness, Ino stops outside a door. She gathers a tiny bit of chakra to her finger tips and press them to her left arm, just under her shoulder.

The jutsu there melts like an ice cube in boiling water. With a faint smile, she presses her fingers to the door, letting the security jutsu on it read her chakra signature.

The door cracks open and she's allowed to enter.

Ino doesn't wait for the door to open wider--it won't, she knows from experience--and slips inside. Hokage-sama, wearing a black hat with the spiral leaf (which looks, when tilted up, like a spiral of fire, Ino thinks, and thinks that's apt) and black robes, which are the inverse of her white garb, up in the Hokage building, looks up from her desk.

"Yamanaka." Tsunade-sama's voice is warm under the business-like briskness of her voice. "What do you have to report?"

Ino glances at the scarlet spiral on her arm, the one that not even Sakura or Shikamaru know about, and assumes an easy, but battle-ready, stance. "It's as you suspected," she says, her voice cold as ice. "He's the one. The others were only meant to get him back to the village without raising any eyebrows."

"And we wouldn't have," Tsunade-sama mutters, "if I wasn't a medical nin and hadn't remembered something similar in an old journal. Old Sarutobi would have passed over this."

Ino nods her head. "The others have all collapsed. I've ordered them brought to sub-basement four."

Tsunade looks tired. "That's where Orochimaru was found doing human experiments," she says sharply, with a glance at Ino. "That's not funny."

"It's not meant to be," Ino says, sitting on her temper. "But there's no other rooms with the same ability for containment and control. We don't know if the false bodies can wake up again. If they do--in that room, they won't get far."

Her Hokage sighs. "You're right," she says, waving one hand. "My apologies."

Ino says nothing to that. To tell the truth, Ino doesn't really feel that it needs any. A part of her considers the fact that they're using the very rooms that Orochimaru had done to experiment on villagers as their containment room as... amusing. Ino has the self-preservation to not say that though. Not to Hokage-sama. 

"What do you think Hatake's next move will be?" Hokage-sama asks.

"It's impossible to tell," Ino says, "as he doesn't even know himself. That's one thing that's crystal--he has no idea of the fact that he was missing for a week and a half and that his team was late getting back. He thinks it was supposed to take as long as it has. At the moment, he's more concerned about the fact that he's _hallucinating_ Rin and upset about what's happened between him and Haruno."

Ino never calls her best friend by her first name when it comes to business. It's a tiny thing but it lets her keep her cool just a little better.

Tsunade-sama scowls at the paperwork. "Should we be putting them back together?"

"No," Ino says, because she honestly doesn't think that's going to do any good. "That would only cause Haruno to be in the line of fire more. We've little idea of what Ogata has planted in Hatake as it is."

"Your report says that he's been reacting with loathing to you," Tsunade-sama says thoughtfully. "Do you think it's because of?"

Ino cuts her Hokage off. "I know," she says. "I suspect it's because I'm playing the role as his opposite despite also being a carrier." 

Ino takes small comfort in the fact that, of the four carriers in Konoha, she's the only one who is allowed out of the ANBU compound. 

"Be careful of him," Hokage-sama says. "You know why I agreed to let you remain awake. We're dealing with an unknown bio-weapon and you're part of it. Do nothing that'll harm the village."

"I love Konoha," Ino says quietly. "If I thought my being placed in stasis like the other three would be better for it, I would gladly agree. But Hokage-sama, I'm the best you've got to figure this out. No one else was compatible."

"Your mother came close," Hokage-sama says reflectively. "But with her weak heart, we couldn't take the chance. And she doesn't have your particular abilities either to keep from being noticed as… "

"Missing?" Ino completes. "I wouldn't be able to do this much if it wasn't for Naruto." She's always believed in giving credit where it is due.

She wonders if Hokage-sama knows her face softens at those words.

"Besides," Ino says, "we're lucky to have found a match as close as it is when the original bloodline has been destroyed." 

"I wasn't arguing that." Hokage-sama smiles, for all that it's brief. "I'm glad we've been so lucky. What else have you got for me?"

Ino hesitates a second, then tells her Hokage about how Rin had looked to her, through Kakashi's eyes, and how Kakashi was fighting with everything he had against the irrational rage that bubbles under the surface of his mind.

"Alright," Tsunade-sama said, once she was done. "Continue to keep an eye on him. I'll need to review your reports more thoroughly to decide if we're moving the project up. Do you need any back up? I know you've been using Naruto, but..."

"Naruto is doing fine," Ino assures her. "He's not much for subtle but that works in his favour. No one would expect him to be helping me, and most people, let's be frank, don't think I'm much of a threat anyway. I doubt our not-so-friendly thinks I'm anything more than a silly girl who is over-protective of her friend."

Which, well, she can be pretty over-protective. But this time, she thinks, she's got good reason. There's no way she wants Sakura anywhere near Hatake when Hatake is the key to some new bio-weapon.

Tweaking what had already been a scenario almost doomed to having them break up so that it both happened just a little sooner and a little more decisively… 

Child's play for her. 

Despite the fact that she feels utterly horrendous about having done that to Sakura.

 _It's for the village,_ Ino tells herself again. _And separating them now means Sakura is safer._

She would rather Sakura be safe than be happy, which is an ugly thing to know about herself.

The fact that Ino is a carrier of the same weapon that Hatake actively carries doesn't bother her. Between the fact that it's controlled by Hokage-sama's abilities and due to their activation of the project, which has locked down anything Ino might be able to pass on any further… 

Ino is about as safe as the average person, when it comes to passing this on. She's not the medical genius that Sakura is, but Ino is more than able to keep up with any explanation that Hokage-sama has given her, and Hokage-sama is certain she's safe. 

Especially, Ino thinks, when it's not even all of her that can leave the compound.

"Good," Hokage-sama says, "you're the most useful that way."

Ino hides a smile. She agrees with her Hokage, of course, but there's more to it than that: she has fun with it. It's fun to act the silly girl.

"I've got an appointment with Morino," Hokage-sama continues. "I'll leave you to your machinations, ANBU Captain Yamanaka. I'll see you here tomorrow, at this time, to discuss Project Rin further. Tell Naruto he's to attend tomorrow's meeting."

Ino bows her acceptance, which triggers the jutsu that covers her tattoo to activate again, and disappears in another puff of smoke.

She reappears outside, near her family's shop, though she shakes her head and hops away from it. Despite what she's told Sakura, Ino has no inclination to work there today. 

But it's easiest to teleport to where she's used to being and no place is easier to get to then the childhood home. 

Ino leaps down from the walkway, and lands on the ground easily, as her braids lash out behind her.

"Hey." 

She glances over her shoulder, genuinely startled. It's Shikamaru, his hands stuffed in his pocket, his shoulders slumped. Temari-san is walking with him. Ino wonders if she's ruined a date or something but, really, figures that any idiot would realize that Ino had no idea they were around.

"Hey," she says, turning around to fully face them. She rests one hand on her hip and lets the other hang casually. "Shikamaru, Temari-san. Out for a walk?"

They're just about the last people who she wants to talk to right now, but Ino keeps that out of her manner. 

"Breakfast," he says, with a glance at Temari-san. Ino stomps down on the urge to feel jealous. Even if she had the time these days for a relationship, Ino knows in exacting detail all the reasons it would be a horrific idea. It twists something in her heart to see other people out together though. "Did you want to join us?"

"I don't mind," Temari-san's voice is pleasant, polite. If she minds, Ino thinks, she's as good at hiding it as Ino is. "I haven't had a chance to talk to you much."

"Yeah, well," Ino says, lifting her shoulders in a shrug. "A girl ain't around much when she's busy supporting a friend."

"Haruno?" Shikamaru asks.

"Been practically living there," Ino says glibly, which isn't a lie and thus makes everything else seem more truthful. "She's having a rough time of it lately."

Shikamaru smiles his slow, approving smile, as Temari-san looks evaluating. "You always did tend to fuss," he says fondly. Ino pretends that doesn't make her heart skip a beat. "Come on, Ino. Have breakfast with us."

She looks at Temari-san, who nods that it's fine with her. Ino can only take her at her word. 

"Sure," she says, mind ticking away at other problems. Naruto will be sticking close to Kakashi today, so she doesn't have to worry too much about that. Ino sends a burst of information down the link to the original. That way, Naruto will know about the meeting. 

"Sounds good to me."

 _This is like torture,_ Ino thinks, as she walks with them, discussing easily where they might go for breakfast. _And yet I said yes._

She wishes, for a moment, that things were different.

But even if she could afford a relationship right now, Ino knows she doesn't have the time for it.

Her clock is ticking down.

* * *


	8. Vivace

* * *

Sakura looks up from reviewing the charts for the surgery she's been prepping for the last hour. "Can you repeat that?"

The nurse shifts uneasily and mutters what she'd thought he'd muttered. 

"What do you mean cancelled?" she asks, flipping back through the charts. "Not postponed?"

"No," the nurse says, "his family's decided they can't afford the price."

She purses her lips tightly, sitting on the first five responses she comes up with. They're inappropriate for work. "This has been scheduled for months--have they had a sudden change in circumstances?"

"They looked red-eyed," the nurse says. "They're not happy."

"Are they here?"

"Yes, Haruno-san."

"Tell them the surgery is going forward if they want it to," she says, coming to a decision rapidly. 

"The cost--"

"I'll handle it," Sakura says. "Tell them that. I won't let someone die just because they can't afford the surgery."

As the nurse leaves the room, she goes back to reading the charts. 

It feels good to do good, she thinks, and smiles as she continues her prep.

* * *

Six hours later she's got a raging headache and an empty stomach but her mood is still good. The surgery went well, she doesn't think there will be complications--though, of course, she's having the patient monitored just in case there are--and she's just completed the paperwork that says she'll pay for it.

Sakura manages a smile for the family as they thank her effusively and the moment they're ushered in to see their relative, once she's sure they won't need her to answer any questions, she disappears down the staff hallways and makes for her office.

Her office is dim and blessedly quiet. She turns on her tiny coffeemaker with the flick of a button and while she waits for coffee she nibbles on some dried fruit and nuts. She'll need a proper meal, but the food will help take care of her headache which is what she needs right now.

Sakura stretches, lifting damp with sweat hair back from her neck and sits down in her comfy chair. She wishes idly for a footstool and wonders if she'd be able to get one from supply. 

_What a ridiculous thing to want,_ Sakura chides herself. _Are you a pampered princess or what?_

Rolling her eyes at her own silliness, she opens the drawer where she'd stashed her bag hours ago, and pulls out the journal she and Ino are sharing. It's her turn to write in it and Sakura flips it open.

Ino's writing is bold and spiky, like she is, Sakura thinks with a smile. 

_Forehead!_ , greets the writing. _I've been thinking about that play some more and, you know what, I wonder if I can't find anything about the writer to see if he did have training. If he did, then we'll have to watch him to make sure he doesn't inadvertently give away village secrets with his work..._

Sakura shakes her head, laughing just a little, as she keeps reading. Ino rambles on about the play and then a little more about the movie she's planning to drag Sakura to see that night, though Sakura notes, with amusement, Ino is careful to not give away what the movie is _called_. 

There's a few paragraphs going on about the unfairness of everything and how she's pretty sure that she's going to be alone for life, except that she's got Sakura and so that's not so bad: they can be single forever together, right?

Despite the way that makes her heart ache, Sakura rolls her eyes and scribbles in the margins that she's got no intentions of being single for her whole life and if Ino were being honest, horror of horrors, she would admit that she had no plans for that either.

It's only near the end that Ino becomes really serious though. 

_Sakura,_ the writing goes on, _I know you're confused about pretty much everything right now. I'm sorry for that. I just want to let you know that I'll always be on your side._

_Love, Ino_

Sakura lets out a sigh, her eyes a little damp, and blinks hard. She rereads the passage, trailing her fingers down the words, and tries to decide what to answer and how to answer. She can't answer the last bit flippantly--Ino lies all the time but Sakura knows she's sensitive underneath it all and is loathe to hurt her--but the rest of the entry almost demands that she be as ridiculous as possible in response.

Deciding to give it some though, Sakura gets up pours herself a cup of coffee. She's just sat back down when her office door opens and Shizune slips in, milky pale and eyes furtive. Shizune's clutching a file folder in her hands and goes still when she spots Sakura.

Sakura straightens up in her chair, alarmed at Shizune's appearance. "Shizune-san?"

"Shh," Shizune says, shutting and locking the door behind her. "There's been no one else in here, right?"

"It's my office," Sakura says, baffled, "why would there be?" 

"I've got something for you," Shizune says, looking like she's going to be ill. "But you absolutely can't let anyone know that I've told you."

Sakura forces Shizune to sit down, alarmed at the other woman's colour, and once that's done, places her hands on her hips. "What's that supposed to mean?" she whispers, keeping one eye on the door. Her fingers twitch through the seals to activate her security jutsu. Their steady hum as they activate is comforting. "If you're not supposed to tell me then maybe you shouldn't!"

Normally, Sakura is pretty fond of gossip, but this--this makes her uneasy, the way Shizune is acting, and with Shizune's rank and standing in the eyes of the village, there's very few people that Shizune would be so concerned about getting in trouble, real trouble from. 

A pit of dread curls in Sakura's stomach. _Even knowing that,_ part of her thinks, _Shizune's still come to see her. That means it's got to be important._

"I can't," Shizune says, looking even whiter. "I kept this as long as I could, but... are we safe here?"

"I designed the security here myself," Sakura says quietly. "It's as safe as we're going to get." 

She can't promise total safety. There's no where in the village with that, but her words are enough for Shizune, who sighs in relief. 

Sakura watches her. "Do you want a coffee?" she asks, at a loss as to how to start when she doesn't even know what this is about. 

"Yes," Shizune says, "thank you." 

Sakura nods, closing her journal and putting the cap back on her pen. While Shizune closes her eyes, Sakura puts the journal back in her drawer and gets up to pour the coffee. 

Shizune takes it gratefully, sitting in the other chair, as Sakura takes her seat behind the desk. "I shouldn't be telling you any of this," Shizune says gravely. "But I think you need to know." She pushes the folder across the desk.

Sakura looks at it like it might bite her and then tentatively picks it up. "How much trouble are we going to be in?"

Shizune glances to the side. "That," she says, "probably depends on how it all falls out."

That makes Sakura frown and, with another glance at Shizune, who is whey-faced and sipping carefully at her coffee, like she doesn't trust it to stay down, Sakura flips open the folder.

The first thing she notices is the picture of Ino clipped to the top of what's clearly a medical report. Sakura glances up at Shizune, frowns at her, and then starts reading it. Date of infection... symptoms and the dates they've first become apparent... treatment...

With every line, her frown deepens until she's scowling at the page, and at the dates on it. Two months, she thinks, studying the dates. Nearly three.

All without her knowing anything about it.

And, Sakura realizes, Ino's been running missions while ill. She gropes for her coffee and swallows a large gulp of it, trying to force down the lump in her throat.

She can't--doesn't want to--imagine what it would feel like to lose Ino and yet, and yet looking at this, she sees that Ino's been doing things that have been putting her at serious risk of being lost for months. 

And she shouldn't be able to, Sakura thinks, reading the symptoms and their treatments. She should be in bed. 

Sakura tries to think if she's noticed anything off about Ino lately and comes up with nothing. Maybe looking a bit tired but she's been sleeping on a couch and so that makes sense.

The signature at the bottom of the report is dated two days ago. She stares at Tsunade-shishou's familiar signature for a long time before she flips to the next page.

The next three pages are of people she recognizes--a Jounin, a Chuunin, a Genin--but no one she's particularly close to. That's almost a relief. What isn't a relief is the steady march of symptoms that match Ino's and Tsunade-shishou's damning signature at the bottom of each page.

She can't remember seeing the other ninja around the village lately, now that she thinks about it. None of them have been sick for as long as Ino.

 _There's rumours,_ Naruto had told her, _about people getting sick and the old lady not being able to cure them._

She'd asked Ino about it.

Ino had lied without even blinking. Sakura takes a deep breath and tells herself she's not allowed to be mad until she's read everything in the folder. 

She turns back to Ino's page and checks the bottom of the report then frowns as she looks at the other three who are ill again. At the bottom of their pages there's a note about placing them in stasis. 

Sakura purses her lips. They haven't put anyone in stasis since the war with Cloud, almost her entire lifetime ago.

 _Was that really the only solution?_ she asks. Of course, there's no answer.

The next three pages have three more shinobi, one to each page. Only, she realizes, these people are dead and their symptoms are different. 

On all of them, the cause of death is left blank. That disturbs her more than she wants to admit. How could Tsunade-shishou not know? Even if a cure hasn't been found… 

Sakura reads their medical reports, the names of the shinobi--all of them, she realizes, sound familiar though she's not sure why--and studies the pictures of their pale skins and the peculiar way they look like something has been sucked out of them. Each of them have an incisions on their right arm.

The signature at the bottom of these pages isn't Tsunade-shishou's.

It's Ino's. 

Sakura lifts her eyes to the rest of the writing again and shakes her head. If the signature hadn't been pure Ino and as familiar to her as her own, she would never have known. 

She's never seen Ino's writing look so compact and stripped down and business-like. It's tempting to reach for their journal to compare the words. She doesn't. 

There's a note that the three bodies are being kept in containment.

Turning past the dead, she freezes at the next page.

Kakashi's face, still masked, though his hitae-ate is missing, stares up at her from a picture. 

Sakura closes her eyes and then opens them, determined to face this horror all the way through to the end. 

She just doesn't know how it all fits together yet. Ino and Kakashi and the three sick and the three dead...

How do they all connect together? What pieces of this puzzle are missing? Sakura tells herself to quit stalling and forces herself to read through the report on Kakashi. 

The first page isn't so bad as it's just a summary of his last mission scroll. 

Sakura lingers on the notation that he was a week late getting back from it--she hadn't known that, her rank didn't permit her to see how long missions were supposed to take unless they were hers.

The next page is in Tsunade-shishou's writing. She has to read it a second time because the first time through makes no sense. Physically, she learns, as of two days ago--when he'd gotten back to the village--he's fit except for a small incision on arm.

She doesn't remember seeing a cut like that on him and Tsunade-shishou's report doesn't mention healing it. Sakura studies the picture of it before carrying on. 

The next page is in Ino's unfamiliar writing. The report is on Kakashi's mental state and is dated yesterday, 11:13 pm.

Sakura knows the time. She and Ino had been back at her place, lounging in front of the TV while Ino scribbled in the journal they shared and Sakura had been going through the fabric she'd bought to piece together her next quilt.

She doesn't see how Ino could have written a report dated at that time, but there's no denying that the in-depth discussion of Kakashi's mental state is all Ino. Ino has always been about the mind, she thinks, as she reads it and picks out turns of phrase that are pure Ino. 

In Ino's opinion, Kakashi should be pulled off active duty immediately as he's been severely compromised by his captivity and subsequent torture at the hands of--the name is scribbled out and unreadable--and Sakura bites her lip so hard that it just about bleeds.

Ino talks rage and about another voice and murmurs that Kakashi hears that no one else can. This section is stressed as hypothetical and only guesswork. It's enough to leave Sakura nauseous.

Sakura reads the note that, as far as can be determined, Kakashi is the key.

 _The key to what?_ she wonders, but the page doesn't tell her. It feels like she's missing half a conversation somewhere that would explain it all. Instead, she thinks, it just reads like a nightmare. 

The next page makes it worse. 

Ino's writing ends and Tsunade-shishou's takes over once more. This time, it's a detailed timeline of events. 

Kakashi's infection is the newest on the timeline, Ino's is the oldest. She likes neither of their positions and isn't sure what she can do about it.

She's about to turn the page when she realizes that Ino's name is on the timeline twice. Once, nearly three months ago, is her initial infection.

The second, a month and a half ago, simply states Ino's name and under that two words:

Project Rin.

There's a half-page of paper about Project Rin. It tells her little about what it is. Apparently it was used once, twenty years ago, and that it had failed.

There's nothing else in the folder. Not even a paragraph explaining what Project Rin is. 

Sakura looks up at Shizune and struggles to find words that might make sense of what she's just read. 

Shizune watches her wordlessly. 

"What is this?" Sakura asks, pushing the folder away from her. She doesn't want it near her. She doesn't want to see it ever again.

She doesn’t need to; she can remember enough on her own. Her memory isn't what Ino's is, but it's more than good enough for what was, really, a very small folder.

"What do you think?" Shizune asks, lifting her eyebrows and looking grave.

"Why didn't I know?" Sakura asks, her voice is quiet. "Ino didn't even hint--she only told me the latest symptom, the problems with her blood. I guess because she had to be pulled off duty for that."

"She's not off-duty," Shizune says, shattering Sakura just a little more. "She's working directly for Tsunade-shishou at this moment."

"I had no idea--"

"Tsunade-shishou has enacted a full blackout of information in this matter," Shizune tells her. "Ino would have been labeled a traitor to the village had she said anything."

Sakura looks away, unable to think past the growing horror in her gut and the feeling, sharp and bitter, of betrayal. She knows that's ridiculous--if Tsunade-shishou had told her to keep something a total secret, on her loyalty to the village, she'd have done the same thing and not even breathed a word.

And yet... all the same, she feels like, all of a sudden, she doesn't know Ino at all.

She sips her coffee even though she no longer wants it. "Why didn't--why wasn't I--"

"Why weren't you told?" Shizune's voice is almost too gentle for Sakura to want to hear right now. She wishes for someone sharper and then shakes her head at her folly--she wishes Ino had been the one to explain this. She could have yelled at Ino. 

"I think," Shizune says, "that Tsunade-shishou wished to spare you this. You and Ino are very close and as you read, her illness is proving very difficult to treat. Tsunade-shishou is barely managing to manage it enough to keep her stable."

 _Keep her stable._

Sakura lowers her head and tries to keep her breathing steady. Is that going to happen to Kakashi too? How has he been severely compromised when Ino has not and they're both sick? 

Why isn't Kakashi in for treatment? 

Just how good of a liar is Ino?

"I could have helped," Sakura says quietly. "Everyone says that I'm good at what I do, what Tsunade-shishou does."

"That's true," Shizune admits. "Sakura, look at me."

Sakura lifts her head and pretends she's watching Shizune. In reality, she's replaying her and Ino's last few conversations which leads her to...

"Sakura," Shizune says, "no one is allowed to help in the research of their nearest and dearest's illnesses. It's against every code and regulation we have and those are for a good reason. You wouldn't be ration--"

"That _pig_ ," Sakura gasps with sudden realization. "I'm such an idiot! She just about-- she _did_ give me everything I needed to figure it out and I, I was all caught up in _him_ not her--" She shoves her chair away from the desk, grabs her bag, and flings herself towards the doorway. The security jutsu tumble down around her like leaves in the fall. 

"Sorry, Shizune-san!" she calls over her shoulder. "I've really _really_ got to go."

She leaves the building and disappears up onto the rooftops. Once there, she dampens her chakra signature to make it a little more difficult for Shizune to follow her and then begins scanning for Ino's chakra. 

Her heart tells her that she should check on Kakashi. She blinks away tears and tells herself no. Ino has been ill longer, has worse symptoms. She'll get the truth from Ino and then she'll get Kakashi and drag him into the hospital.

By his hair, if she's got to.

In the village, where there's so many people, it's not an easy task to locate one person but Sakura has been living with Ino these last few days and even before that, she's been friends with her for a long, long time. 

She knows Ino's chakra signature inside and out.

There, she thinks, narrowing her eyes. Got her.

Sakura darts over the walkways. It's windy and the wind keeps blowing her hair in her eyes despite the way her hitae-ate is situated to prevent exactly that. It doesn't matter though, she thinks, as she makes a leap over three buildings--all of them too rickety to withstand someone standing on them--and lands on the fourth, then turns right and continues down that pathway.

Down below her, the residential section changes to the commercial sector and it gets more and more crowded. No one pays her any mind and that's alright. She's a normal sight for them, which is good, because what she's feeling isn't very normal at all. 

She's so _angry_. She wants to burst into tears only that won't help anyone and she needs to help them.

She needs to know why Ino lied. 

The rational part of her reminds her of the blackout Tsunade-shishou placed on this information and points out that if Ino had said anything, she'd have been labeled a traitor to the village.

But that doesn't change Sakura's feelings one bit and she smiles grimly as she picks up her pace. It hadn't changed Ino's either, she thinks, not when Ino has been dropping hints like candy. Telling her she's off duty, telling her about her blood work, Sakura wonders if Ino invented all the rumours about people getting sick and not being cured. 

Sakura stifles a laugh, one that's broken and brittle and not at all amused, and keeps running. 

She leaps, in a twisting somersault, and lands on the ground. From her ground, now, she can see Ino. Ino looks healthy, fine, like there's nothing wrong with her at all and how could anyone possibly think that there is? 

Ino looks bemused, like she can't quite believe the company she's keeping. She's with Shikamaru and Temari. Sakura can't decide if she's grateful or not for their presence.

She knows, after all, that both of them are scathingly intelligent. 

This might not be the conversation for that. 

Not when Sakura just wants to shriek at Ino, then maybe cry, and then maybe force her to an examination room so that Sakura can confirm everything that was in that god-awful folder.

And then she'd do the same to Kakashi, who doesn't even know he's sick.

"Forehead!" Ino chirps, as Sakura comes striding over to the trio. "You got let out early?"

Shikamaru murmurs something and Temari smiles slightly in greeting but Sakura has no time for any of that. She slams her hand down on the table, barely noticing when it cracks and then collapses with the strength of her blow.

She's not surprised to find that, of the three who'd been sitting at the table, Ino looks the most fearless. Shikamaru brushes dust and wood shards off his pants, looking grumpy. Temari looks equally unimpressed as she kicks a bit of wood away from her. 

Ino's got her hands held up, like she's still entirely confused and Sakura ignores the voice that points out that, really, she must look like she's totally deranged. 

"Forehead?" Ino says, all wide-eyes and butter-wouldn't-melt-in-her-mouth innocence. "You okay?"

Temari mutters something a lot darker than that and Shikamaru winces but doesn't disagree. Sakura barely notices them.

All Sakura focuses on is the way that, now that she's paying attention, she can tell that Ino is too pale and that her eyes are a darker blue than they should be--almost purple--and that she's lost weight recently. And there's calculation in Ino's eyes that says Ino is trying, right now, to figure out what's going on.

"Why didn't you tell me you were sick?" Sakura demands, clinging to the anger because it's better than tears.

Ino blinks. "But I did," she says, "when you asked why I was off-duty for the moment. It's nothing big, Sakura--"

"Don't lie," she grates out. "You've been sick for _months_ and still on duty."

Ino's smile is as cold as a winter's sky. It's got to be the first, Sakura thinks, real smile that she's seen in months from Ino.

That hurts too.

"What are you talking about?" Ino says, sounding confused but the icy smile doesn't match and Sakura can see now how Ino is lying.

"Don't lie to me," Sakura says. "You've been doing that for months. Isn't it about time you told me the truth?"

Something unreadable flashes in Ino's eyes. "Prove I've lied," she says and Sakura's heart sinks as betrayal smashes over her.

"Ino," Sakura says, " _I know_."

* * *


	9. Glissando

* * *

Kakashi stares at the spot where Rin had stood and breathes heavily. He doesn't know why he feels such an aching sense of loss. Rin left but she's left him before and he knows where to find her.

Why does her disappearance echo achingly through him this time? He considers his sheet-trapped knees and tries to remember what he's dreamed about in hopes that doing so might jog his memory. 

Nothing occurs to him. There's a welter of fever blurred images, like he's been sick, and it's all impressions and pain. He thinks it must have been a nightmare.

That's nothing new.

He runs his hands through his tangled hair and decides that later he'll go to the stone again to find her. Kakashi knows he probably shouldn't.

(Hadn't Hokage-sama said to report anything strange to her?)

He also knows that he probably will go see Rin again. It's like an ache in his soul. So many years of all of them gone and now she's… not back but _here_. It's something precious. How can he give her up? 

That's the problem, he knows. He can't. Not even if she's just a symptom brought on by the stress of every mad thing that's going on. He _should_ stay away. Or report that he's seeing her.

But hadn't he told Minato-sensei and Obito not to worry about him, because Rin was looking after him?

How can he go back on that?

With a shake of his head, Kakashi untangles himself from his sheets. He picks clean clothing out and heads for the bathroom. He senses Naruto's chakra still in his apartment but if his former-student notices him, he has the grace not to say anything and Kakashi doesn't go down the hall far enough to see into the living room. 

A shower, all hot water and steam and getting really clean for what feels like the first time in weeks helps to clear his mind though it doesn't help make sense of the scattershot images that drift in and out of his reach like dandelion fluff blown about on a breeze.

He tries to think past his return to Konoha and finds that he can't remember much. That's troubling. It has to be the exhaustion, he thinks, though he's rested now. Surely it will become clear once he's more awake.

That doesn't sound right, even in his head, as he's been in far worse missions and remembered far more. 

(Since when has he had trouble remembering things?)

Kakashi shakes his head irritably. He's going to talk to a few of his friends today. Not only about Sakura, though that will be a topic, but because he's been away for a few weeks and he likes to keep up with them. 

None of that feels very important though. There's an emptiness inside of him. A dull sheen of grey over his thoughts that he can't seem to think around. He wonders if it's from the mess of Sakura breaking up with him. Is that it or… 

Or what? he asks himself mockingly, the shower's spray forcing his tense muscles to relax as he stands under it. 

He doesn't have an answer to his question.

Kakashi relegates it to the back of his mind. There's more important things to figure out now. Like understanding what his friends had been thinking when they broke his confidence. His stomach twists. Like understanding what he'd been thinking when he'd said Rin's name in his sleep. 

He supposes, on top of that, the fact that he's been seeing Rin everywhere the last few days should not be considered a point in favour of… of getting back with Sakura when she's broken up with him over Rin.

Finishing his shower, Kakashi dries off and gets dressed. His hair is still damp, because he can't be bothered drying it properly and he just settles his hitae-ate over his eye and leaves the bathroom, leaving the fan still running. His little apartment can't clear out all the steam fast enough to keep the walls from getting gross unless he leaves the fan on for a while longer. He's learnt from experience. 

Naruto is up and moving about now and Kakashi heads back to his bedroom rather than go face him. It's not, he tells himself, that he's avoiding him. It's just that... 

Kakashi leans in the doorway and studies his empty room. He notes that he'll have to vacuum and that he really should make his bed now or else it'll just be more of a pain later, as he wrestles with the ridiculous swell of disappointment in him. Rin's not in his room. 

He'd hoped that she'd come back. 

With a sigh, Kakashi enters the room, wrinkling his nose at the nightmare-heavy air. He opens the window, certain it had been open last night and not sure when it had been closed. Perhaps Naruto closed it, he thinks, and refuses to let himself be overly concerned about it. The fresh air is like a taunt against his skin. He drinks it in for a moment before turning to make his bed and then arm himself more thoroughly.

He doesn't know why he feels the need today to dress like he's going out in the field, but it's a soothing thing to do. It comforts him as he heads down the hallway towards the living room Kakashi mulls over what that says about him. 

The couch is tidy and all the blankets and pillows that he'd pulled out to make a temporary bed have been folded and put away. Kakashi blinks. He's pretty sure that Naruto has dusted for him too. That touches him even while he's amused.

Kakashi wanders over to the kitchen and finds Naruto busily at work cooking up a storm. "I didn't know you could cook," Kakashi says, idly crossing his arms over his chest. "Wasn't your diet limited to ramen, milk, and cereal?"

"When I was twelve," Naruto says, a frown of concentration on his face as he flips an omelet. "I've learned better, Kakashi-sensei. What do you want for breakfast?"

Kakashi wants to tell Naruto off for cooking in his kitchen without permission. Not even Sakura has cooked breakfast for him--he prefers to cook breakfast.

This feels weird.

Kakashi tries to decide if anything has felt normal lately and when the answer is 'no' feels like complaining now would just make him feel even more uncomfortable. 

"Where did you get the eggs?" Kakashi asks, taking a seat at his own table. He feels awkward though he doesn't let it show. Even hiding that much makes him feel like he's won a victory. There haven't been many of those in the last few days. 

Naruto glances over his shoulder. "I went out and picked up a few things," he says. "The morning markets open at four, Kakashi-sensei. It's just past nine."

He nods slowly. 

"Anyway," Naruto says, "I figured that cooking breakfast made the most sense. You've got a lot of things to cook for that. I didn't think you cooked, Kakashi-sensei?"

"Just breakfast," Kakashi says, not sure why he's admitting it. "I can cook breakfast."

He can cook the basics for other things, because a person shouldn't live on just what you can make for breakfast but it's the only meal that he's really put forth the effort to learn how to make things for. 

"Oh?" Naruto's voice is curious but not demanding and it's tone that Kakashi isn't used to hearing from him.

Kakashi studies Naruto's back while reaching for a pear from the fruit basket in the center of the table. He turns the pear over in his hands and damns himself for a fool. "Rin always said," he says, "that breakfast is the most important meal of the day." He doesn't know why he tells Naruto that. Kakashi keeps his eyes on the pear and wonders when he's gotten so soft. 

"Oh," Naruto says, his tone different. And then, "What do you want in your omelet?"

Kakashi tells him, surprised at the lack of questioning and yet... not wishing to ask about it and _invite_ questioning. He doesn't want to talk about Rin, not really, not when her loss is aching like new again and he doesn't know why.

In short order, there's two plates heaped high with food and coffee and juice on the table for them to help themselves to and Kakashi is mildly surprised to find that not only does it all smell edible, it actually smells good.

"Don't think I'll do this for you all the time," Naruto says, sitting down with a thump. The sink behind him is already filled with dishes that are soaking. It's not quite as efficient as Kakashi's routine but it's… adequate. "This is just due to special circumstances."

"Ah," Kakashi says dryly. He considers how he's going to eat as Naruto digs in and when he's sure that Naruto isn't watching him, quickly eats some. "Then I won't hold my breath that it'll occur again."

Truth be told, he's not sure if he wants it to happen again. Even though the food _is_ good.

The look in Naruto's eyes tells him that, somehow, Naruto has figured that out. They eat in silence. Kakashi eats whenever Naruto pays attention to something else (which, Kakashi notes, seems to happen fairly often--he wonders if this is another newly sensitive trait that Naruto has picked up) and in short order, the food is gone, including the pear that Kakashi had been toying with.

Naruto, without asking, takes the dishes over to the sink. "What are we doing today?"

Kakashi pauses. "We?"

"I promised Sakura-chan that I'd look after you," Naruto says innocently.

"No," Kakashi says, "I'm pretty sure that was just for last night. I heard that quite clearly."

"I don't remember that," Naruto says artlessly. "I seem to remember a different request."

Kakashi frowns as he gets up. "You're not following me around all day." The very idea makes him hideously uncomfortable. It's the last thing he wants to do, going around to his friends and seeing who would have talked to Sakura about Rin and why, with Naruto following him around like an ill-advised guard dog.

"Sakura-chan told me to look after you," Naruto says stubbornly, up to his elbows in soapy water.

For a moment, Kakashi is irritated at Sakura. It almost feels good, after being sad and angry and tired. There's a whisper under the irritation that points out that surely she wouldn't have set a guard on him if she didn't care. He curses himself for a fool when that thought occurs. He already knows she cares.

"I mean," Naruto says, continuing on like he hasn't noticed Kakashi's growing silence, "you could try to get away from me, but I'm pretty good at finding people myself."

Kakashi can't even argue that which is the irritating thing about it. Naruto doesn't have the Inuzuka nose, but he's got an ear for talk and the ability to flood the village with copies of himself. It's a less elegant way of finding someone, perhaps, but it works and Kakashi knows it and Naruto knows that he knows it.

Kakashi wonders who has been teaching Naruto. Along with the sensitivity this sort of not-quite-a-threat isn't Naruto's style. At least, it wasn't. 

He's not sure what to make of the change.

"We're going to see Kurenai," he says, knowing that giving in is going to make Naruto think he can get away with this and yet keen to avoid having a million Narutos looking for him. Giving in, Kakashi thinks, is the lesser of two evils. "Unless she's not in the village?"

"She's in town," Naruto says, after a moment. Kakashi is a bit startled by the faint anxiety that crosses Naruto's face. "But why are we going to see her, Kakashi-sensei?"

Kakashi stares at Naruto and just shakes his head. "Figure it out."

With that, he leaves to go check his room again, sure that Naruto will finish with the dishes and, more than that, just wanting to get out of the same room as him for a few moments. As he leaves, he thinks he hears Naruto sigh and murmur something under his breath. There's a pause and then Naruto murmurs something else. Kakashi doesn't stay to hear what's being said.

His bedroom is a quiet, horrible place and the loudest thing in it is his own breathing. He leans against his door and wonders at everything. It's been a few long, awful days with missing time and rage and now... now he doesn't feel that.

The breakup niggles at him like a broken tooth but he's not enraged over it and that makes him wonder if he ever was. He wants to be able to explain things to Sakura, he does, he misses her like he'd miss an arm, but he's not furious.

It's a weird thing, he thinks, wondering what else is wrong with him. Why _was_ he so angry? And where is Rin? He tells himself, again, that he's being ridiculous and Rin will show up but...

But he doesn't think that she will. He doesn't know why he feels that way with such certainty. Shifting from foot to foot, Kakashi startles at the knock to his door. "What?"

"Kakashi-sensei," Naruto says, "are we going?"

With a sigh, Kakashi turns and opens the door. Naruto is watching him with an unfamiliar speculative look in familiar eyes. 

"We're going," Kakashi says, "are you ready?"

"Everything is cleaned up." Just like that, the unfamiliar look disappears. Naruto wrinkles his nose as Kakashi shuts the door to his bedroom and they both head down the hall. "Though your place could use a little mess."

"You would think so," Kakashi replies dryly as they step outside. He doesn't bother pointing out that Naruto is the one who has cleaned up most of the mess in his place. Kakashi takes the time to lock his apartment up securely with jutsu and finds the hum of them comforting under his hand. With reluctance he pulls away and turns to face Naruto, who is rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. "I've seen your place, remember?"

Naruto laughs sheepishly, shrugging his shoulders, one hand rubbing the back of his head. "You're just jealous," Naruto says, which Kakashi thinks makes no sense at all.

He doesn't bother asking Naruto to explain that. He's sure that whatever Naruto would tell him in lieu of an explanation would only give him a headache. Instead, he watches Naruto for a second and then flits off, over the roofways, smirking slightly at Naruto's cry of indignation.

Kakashi is unsurprised when Naruto catches up with him seconds later and even less surprised by the fact that Naruto is grinning. He would, Kakashi thinks, and finds himself amused by that. It's a strange thing, when he hasn't expected himself to feel anything like good humour today.

"Where are we going?" Naruto asks as they leap up over a tree's branches and land lightly on the other side, where the walkway continues.

"Kurenai's apartment," Kakashi says. "She doesn't have a team at the moment and if you're sure she's in the village--"

"I am."

"--then she'll either be there or out in the training areas at this time of day." He was fairly sure that she'd be at her place, though, because he's known Kurenai for years and she's never liked training in the mornings.

In short order, they land on the balcony of Kurenai's apartment. Kakashi has long thought that having a balcony is both a brilliant idea of hers and a dreadful security risk all in one. He's never certain which side he falls on more but right now he's glad for it. It means he doesn't have to suffer through an elevator (elevators are death traps waiting to happen) or attempt to find the stairs when he knows that the stairs are jutsu'd to appear only to those who live in the block. 

He knocks on the glass.

Kurenai's face appears in the window a second later and she opens her door. "Kakashi," she says, her voice pleasant. "Hello." She raises one eyebrow slightly at the sight of Naruto. "Naruto-kun."

Naruto lets out a laugh and bubbles out a hello that makes Kakashi wish, again, that he hadn't brought Naruto along with him. 

"Kurenai," Kakashi says, with a sharp glance at Naruto. "Do you have company?"

Her eyes look amused. "I do now," she says, and steps away from the glass door in open invitation. 

"Thank you," Kakashi says. "Naruto, stay out here."

"Whaaat?" Naruto objects. "Kakashi-sensei!" 

"I mean it," Kakashi says, glowering at his former student. "You can keep an eye on me from here."

Naruto grumbles and mutters and crosses his arms over his chest, but Kakashi is used to him and takes that as an affirmative. Kakashi steps into Kurenai's apartment, which has many plants (he has no idea where she finds the time to keep them alive) and furniture that is designed to be comfortable and soothing. It's a far cry from his apartment, that's for sure. This is a home. His is a place to stay, especially now that Sakura...

He shuts down that line of thought.

"Would you like tea?" Kurenai asks as she shuts the door and pulls the curtain back over it. "And why is Naruto-kun keeping an eye on you?"

Now that he's here, Kakashi feels a little awkward. He nods his assent to the first question and fumbles for a way to talk about the other. "Sakura asked him to," he says, "which is something when she's broken up with me."

He's sure, after all, that Kurenai has heard about it by now. Even if a kunoichi's specialty has nothing to do with gossip, it's easy as pie to keep up with it when every ninja in the village is a gossip at heart. That's the problem, Kakashi thinks, of training them all to want to know things. They don't know when to leave peoples' business well enough alone.

It's to Kurenai's credit, Kakashi thinks, that she doesn't bother to deny knowing. "And she's sent Naruto to look after you?" Kurenai murmurs, fussing over a teapot, the faintest touch of a line between her brows showing she's as confused over the nursemaid treatment as Kakashi is.

"Mmm," Kakashi replies, which is affirmative enough for both of them. "As you can see, he's taken to it with a will."

Kurenai laughs softly. "That's Naruto," she says, "he's never been able to do things halfway once he's decided that he wants to do them."

Kakashi settles himself on one of the couches. It's the one he normally sits on. A little harder than the rest, it gives the best view of the entire room, including both of the exits and a glimpse of the hallway that leads to the bathroom and Kurenai and her child's bedroom. He doesn't ask where the kid is--given the time, the kid is probably at the Academy and in class with all the other wannabe shinobi. 

She sets tea down in front of him and he murmurs thanks as she takes her own seat, which deliberately puts her at a disadvantage and he marvels, again, that she does it so easily. If he sat there, he'd be as uneasy as a mouse being hunted by a cat and he knows it. 

He sips at his tea. She does the same.

"What do I owe the pleasure of this visit to?" Kurenai asks, after they've spent a few moments in contemplative and companionable silence.

"Sakura mentioned," which is a poor way, he thinks, to describe what Sakura had done, "that Rin is the reason she broke up with me. The thing is, she shouldn't know about Rin."

Kurenai's eyes widen. Try though he might, he can't see anything dishonest in her gaze. Nor can he smell it. Her surprise is genuine. "Someone told her?"

Her surprise is real and it shouldn't be. Sakura named her and had been telling the truth. Now Kurenai is telling the truth about having _not_ said anything.

What's going on? Who is telling the real truth?

"Yes," Kakashi says darkly, sipping his tea again and torn between being pleased that it hadn't been Kurenai and disgruntled that it hadn't been. "I was hoping you might have an idea who would tell her."

He deftly leaves off the fact that Sakura had said it was her. From the way her gaze fills with a touch of asperity, he knows that she's figured that out, but she lets it go. Her scent is still honest.

"I can't think of anyone," Kurenai says thoughtfully. "I know that Genma and Raidou came over all watchful on her-- she was alone at a bar and they thought she might be waiting for a guy, but it turned out that she was just waiting for Hinata-chan and Ino-chan. I don't know if they said anything to her though. They didn't mention it."

Kakashi stares blankly into his cup, trying not to break it, as the not-quite-familiar rage floods him at _that_ name. He takes a breath and then another and struggles to get it under control. He can't just rage at this. He's got to be able to think.

"And that's it?" he says, when he can speak without raging.

Kurenai is giving him a considering, evaluating look and he wonders if she thinks he's just upset about the break up. Please, he thinks, let her think it's just that.

"That's it as far as I know," Kurenai says. Like any good ninja, she doesn't try to say that it is it for sure. There's too many ways for that to backfire on people. "Why?" she adds curiously. "Did Sakura-san tell you that one of your friends told her?"

He's about to say yes, then he pauses. Sakura had given him Kurenai's name and Genma and Raidou's names and Kakashi has the funny feeling that… that Sakura had been telling the truth.

And yet, so is Kurenai. 

He thinks that Genma and Raidou would honestly deny saying anything too. 

"Yes," he says, finally. "She told me to go ask my friends why they would do that. She says that they didn't do it to wound." 

Kakashi's thoughts whirl as he tries to figure out how they're both telling the truth. Does this mean he should trust Gai as well? He thinks back to Gai and now realizes, as he'd forgotten, that Gai hadn't been quite himself.

But what does that mean? 

"If your friends did so," Kurenai says, the 'if' making it clear that she's noticed his preoccupation though she can't know the reasons for it. "Then perhaps they thought it would be healthier for the relationship if everything was out in the open."

"We're shinobi," Kakashi says dryly. "Secrets are our trade."

Kurenai studies him. "I think that--"

A knock on the glass door startles the both of them. Kurenai sets her tea down and heads for the door. "Naruto," she says, once she's opened it. "Kakashi asked you to--"

"Sorry, Kurenai-sensei," Naruto interrupts, which pleases Kurenai not at all and has Kakashi raising his eyebrows as he sets down his tea. "But the old lady's sent Kakashi-sensei a summons." He holds up the little bird with a tiny scroll attached to it's leg so that Kakashi can see it.

"I see," Kurenai says, "then I'm sorry for snapping at you."

She's not really, Kakashi thinks, if only because Naruto interrupted her. On the other hand, neither of them can really blame him for doing so. No one in the village would just ignore a summons from their Hokage or ignore the order to pass it on immediately.

Kakashi reaches the door and Naruto hands over the bird and the scroll as quickly as possible, like they're going to burn him if he doesn't, and sticks his hands behind his back. 

Kurenai lets out a soft sigh. "We'll finish our conversation later," she murmurs as she turns away from the door, heading back over to the couches. The clink of tea cups as she picks them up underscores the fact that this visit is over. "Whenever you're free."

He nods, already breaking open the seal. It's a simple set of orders to present himself to the Hokage at eleven--he glances at the clock, it's quarter to, just enough time to get there--with Naruto. 

Funny, he thinks, but at least he doesn't have to go look for Naruto.

"It looks like we're going to have a job together," he tells Naruto. What else could the summons be for? "Come on, let's go see what Hokage-sama needs us to do." 

(What had he been supposed to report to the Hokage again? He can't remember.)

* * *


	10. Dissonance

* * *

The honeyed ice in Ino's eyes only serves to make Sakura angrier. She hears Shikamaru say something, probably trying to get her to stop and she's unsurprised that Temari does nothing (why should she? this isn't her problem) but mostly, what Sakura knows about the moment is the harsh thrumming of blood in her ears and the way that she really, really wants to hurt Ino.

She shouldn't want to and she knows that. Ino is sick.

Ino is looking at her like she's the stupidest little girl on the playground and that she can't believe she's spent years hanging around her. Ino is the one who has been lying to her. Ino is the one who has stayed with her through everything.

"Don't," Sakura says, barely recognizing her own voice. "Don't look at me like that."

"Like what?" Ino asks easily.

"Like that," Sakura says firmly. "And _stop lying_. I deserve more than that. _You're_ the one that's been trying to pound that into my head, aren't you?"

Ino's gaze turns a little colder. "You don't have any idea of what you're talking about," Ino says. "If you did, you wouldn't be reacting like this."

"You're _ill_ ," Sakura cries, keeping enough of her composure, barely, to keep from shouting it. "And you've been running missions like that!" 

For a moment she thinks that Ino might deny it, might tell the truth and say that it isn't true, but Ino's gaze doesn't change and Sakura's left wondering how much she's known her friend the last few months.

Not as well as she'd thought, she realizes.

"Can you prove it?" Ino asks, clasping her hands behind her back in a position that looks silly and coquettish and that Sakura knows Ino can reach most of her weapons from in a heartbeat. She wonders if Ino would draw a weapon on her. " _If_ I have been, don't you think it would be on Hokage-sama's orders?"

Sakura almost has to admire the way Ino is keeping it all in the hypothetical. Almost.

But Ino's words are like a glass of cold water to the face. The worst part is, it's not a lie. What Ino said was written right down in the dossier. She's seen it with her own eyes. It doesn't stop her from saying what she does next. "Hokage-sama is the one that wrote the protocol for ill shinobi," Sakura says. "She wouldn't do that."

"The protocol only applies in situations where the village is safer if it is followed." Ino's lips curve up in a smile that Sakura's never seen before. "In this case, Hokage-sama chose the path that keeps the village safest."

"You're lying!" The words rip out of her mouth as Sakura glares at Ino. 

"You don't even know what you're talking about," Ino says. "Whatever you've learnt--you really think that it's the whole story? Or were you really that eager to cause a scene?" Ino looks unreachable, which is ridiculous, Sakura knows, when she's standing not even a foot away from her. 

Sakura is distantly aware of the fact that she's shivering violently. Shock, she realizes. It's hard to care about that when she's not getting the answers she needs and Ino has been… has been up to something involving corpses and Kakashi's mission and being very _very_ ill. 

"Shizune-san did what she thought was necessary," Sakura says. A second after, she realizes that she's given away her source of information.

It's just one more drop into the turmoil of her thoughts. 

While it's tempting to blame Ino for the slip, Sakura can't. That can't be explained away by Ino's powers-- but it would be so easy, Sakura thinks, to claim that Ino is using her mind. The mind that everyone underestimates.

As it turns out, even she's done that. And Ino is her best friend.

"I didn't," Ino says, something unreadable in her eyes. "You'd be better forgetting anything you think you know."

"I won't," Sakura says, low and viciously. "You won't _make_ me either."

Ino has the nerve to laugh. "Forehead," she says, like this is an every day ridiculous sort of argument, "if I did, it would be on orders." Ino's gaze is as sharp as razor blades. "You'd never know." 

That has the ring of truth to it and Sakura seethes over the fact that if Ino is telling one truth that she knows she might be telling others. Ino often follows truth with more truth and has never told more lies than are needed and…

Sakura has no idea how many lies Ino might feel are needed right now. 

"I would," Sakura says, "because we're friends."

 _Then let me preserve that,_ Ino's voice whispers in her mind and then, before Sakura can react, her body is no longer under her control.

She struggles against Ino's jutsu but the suddenness of it and her own upset leave her off-balance and before Sakura can free herself and reclaim control over her own body, Ino has forced her body to move. 

Sakura watches in horror as her body (everyone will think it's her, she thinks and is horrified) lashes out at Ino's with a vicious punch. Ino's body makes a good, but entirely faked attempt to get away.

Ino, clearly, isn't supposed to be suspected of expecting a blow.

(Sakura, from her unique vantage point almost has to admire the play acting even while it leaves her cold.)

The blow connects.

Abruptly, Sakura is back in control of her body. She recoils as Ino crumples to the ground in a heap.

Thoughts rush around her brain. Ino can't stop bleeding. Any injury is dangerous in that state, never mind a blow to the head. What has Ino made her do? 

How will this preserve their friendship?

She makes a move to go to Ino--she needs to fix her, then shake her, and then maybe cry because _what the hell is going on?_

Before she can take a full step, however, she finds that she's frozen in place. 

"Right," Shikamaru says, his voice deeply displeased. "Do you want to explain what's going on?"

She knows that Shikamaru doesn't like getting in-between arguments between Ino and her--he has long since given up on getting them to get along without _ever_ fighting--but Sakura supposes that, from Shikamaru's point of view, after watching her hit Ino, after hearing about how Ino is sick (which, Sakura realizes, must be why he's stayed around--he hasn't known either) was crossing a line that Shikamaru won't tolerate. 

Sakura struggles to turn her head to look at him. She needs to explain that it wasn't her, it was Ino who moved her body, and she can't do that with the spine-tingling worry that Shikamaru will stab her.

Shikamaru snorts at her efforts and turns so that she turns with him.

Sakura opens her mouth--

"Shikamaru," Temari says sharply. "The girl's gone."

Sakura's head snaps to look at where Ino had lain. Shikamaru's done the same thing, of course. Shikamaru swears. "A bunshin?"

"Impressive," Temari decides and Sakura spares a moment to hate her for saying that. "We've been with her for hours without knowing."

"Kage Bunshin," Shikamaru says. "But Ino's not got the chakra for that."

Kage Bunshin. Kage Bunshin. Sakura knows who does Kage Bunshin as easily as breathing. She thinks back to the way that Ino and Naruto had been while she and Kakashi had talked and Sakura tries to think of another solution and another reason for this to make sense as she stares into an idea that she doesn't want to think about.

The thing she doesn't--can't--understand is that the idea of Ino and Naruto working together… and how could they have managed this? It had been _Ino's_ powers that had forced Sakura to move…

Has she read something like that before? Where was it?

"Fujiwara's theory," Sakura chokes out. The shadow lets her go and she collapses, ignoring the splinters that stab into her knees. "She's had a chakra boost from someone who _can_ do it."

Naruto doesn't have the skill to enact that theory. His chakra control is too erratic. Ino has that skill.

Sakura's not sure how they managed to work together but it--feels right. And horrible.

Has _Naruto_ been lying to her too? 

"Should we be talking about this here?" Temari's voice, drawling and pointed, feels like a dagger digging into her heart. 

Shikamaru scowls at the world and then grabs Sakura's arm. "We'll head to point 17005. Will you handle--?" 

"I've got it," Temari says, before he even finishes his sentence. "Get going."

He nods and disappears in a swirl of leaves, forcing Sakura to go along with him. The last thing Sakura sees is the mildly impressed expression on Temari's face as the Suna kunoichi kneels down where Ino had stood, ignoring the remnants of the broken table and the squawking of civilians around her. 

Ino wasn't even there. 

It's a bitter, horrible thing to know. She doesn't even know when Ino switched. She'd left the apartment with Ino that morning. Had that been a Kage Bunshin as well? 

Where was the real Ino? 

She lands, with Shikamaru, on a wooden platform that sways under their weight. She blinks at their surroundings and realizes she's having trouble seeing because she's started crying. Rubbing at her face, she tries to steady her breathing; Sakura tries to think of something rational to say. 

Shikamaru's never been impressed by tears. 

Neither is she, right now, but that doesn't mean she can just stop them. She shivers at both the thoughts that are spinning around in her head and at the way the platform they're on sways. She's not quite sure where they are. A glance at the trees tells her that they're still in Konoha and Sakura suspects that they're at a resupply spot in the Nara lands, simply because of who has brought her here, but she's not sure at all.

"Why did Temari-san stay behind?" she asks, when she's certain she can say it without her voice cracking. It doesn't sound as confident as she'd like but she forgives herself that. 

Shikamaru snorts as he sits down, his back to one of the corners of the platform. He looks comfortable out here, in a way that he seldom does in the village proper, and he looks dangerous too.  
Sakura remembers that he probably hasn't liked a single thing he's heard and that he still thinks she hit Ino (even if it had turned out to be a Kage Bunshin). Shikamaru's never been fond of people who hit girls.

Which, the tiny part of her that isn't wrapped up in the things she's trying and failing to understand observes, is rather funny when he's dating the girl who everyone knows will hit back and win.

"You're really out of it, aren't you?" his voice is rough and she notes the way his hands rest near each other. He's treating her like she's dangerous. If she makes an unwise move, he'll trap her in his shadow again. The whole place is blanketed in shadows--it would be easy for him here. "She's stayed behind to clear up the mess you caused by blurting things out in where anyone can hear. Everything you said is going to be spread over the village before the hour is out. Temari's going to deal with the ANBU who'll be showing up."

"Deal with--?"

"Talk to," he says flatly. 

"How can she?" Sakura asks. "She's not even a Konoha-born shinobi."

Shikamaru doesn't answer her. 

Sakura shivers. Now that her anger is fading she finds that it's cold out here, despite the sun that struggles to peer through thick foliage. 

Or maybe it's the fact that she's never had to deal with Shikamaru when he was upset before. She wishes that she'd never had to. It's not very comfortable at all but then none of this is. 

Rubbing at her eyes again--she wishes she could stop leaking tears, when she's managed to stop sobbing--Sakura makes herself breath deeply and tells herself to calm down. She's a kunoichi of Konoha. If talking fails here, she can't afford to be captured by allies. She needs to... to find Ino and find Kakashi and yell at her Hokage and she can't do that if Shikamaru wraps her up in his shadow and refuses to let her go.

"I didn't hit Ino," Sakura says abruptly.

He arches his eyebrows skeptically at her. 

"I _didn't_ ," she insists, a wobble in her voice. "Ino took my body over."

Shikamaru studies her like he's not sure she's telling the truth. "How sick is Ino?"

Sakura looks at his face--it's unreadable--and then looks away, knowing her doubt about his concern shows on her face.

"Don't give me that," he says darkly. "I've been Ino's teammate since we were twelve and her friend before that and just because we've grown up--we're not like _your_ team." 

Sakura flinches, the way he likely meant for her to do, and swallows. "Sick," she says. "She's been sick for months. Hokage-sama hasn't found a way to cure her."

"Symptoms?"

She hesitates another long moment, knowing she's damning herself further with another breach of security and knowing, too, that she's already done so and that doing it more at this point is hardly going to be the worst thing she can do. Then she tells him what the folder had said about Ino's condition. The dizzy spells, the fainting, the loss of weight and the inability to sleep> The way her blood isn't clotting and the way that she's healing slower and how her body is losing the ability to digest food properly and the constant pain from nerve damage as the illness progresses and Sakura keeps talking, listing off everything on the report.

When she's done, she falls silent and, after waiting, breathlessly for a minute, then two, then three, for a response, she dares to look at him. 

He's pale and there's something violent in his eyes--protectiveness, she realizes, and rage because he's not been told and she knows that his jibe about his team not being like hers is true. The former team ten didn't, hadn't, ever kept secrets like this from each other. 

She's envied that before.

She's not sure she envies that now. Not when Shikamaru looks like he's had a foundation pulled out from under his feet.

She can sympathize.

"And so," he says, his voice dangerous, "you thought it would be a great idea to hit someone who was suffering from all of that?"

"I..." her throat closes up and she coughs to clear it. "I _didn't_. It wasn't me."

Sakura doesn't know if he believes her. She's not sure if she would, in his place. 

"If you hadn't hit her," Shikamaru says, "I'd have had both of you in my shadow."

"Ino wouldn't have let you," she says. "Ino knows your jutsu better than almost anyone." She can't bring herself to look at him any longer and stares down at her nails and her knees and the way they're hurting now. She pulls out a few splinters and shifts so that she can get to the rest of them.

Shikamaru lets her. She supposes that it doesn't count as much of a threat for her to be healing herself. Or perhaps, she thinks, he's in shock. She's still feeling off-kilter and upset herself. She needs to talk to someone.

She's not sure she can talk to him. They've never been friends though they've always been friendly.

"I don't understand why she wouldn't have told us," he mutters and Sakura knows he means him and Chouji.

Sakura's thought of an answer though. He won't like it. That's one of the reasons that she says it. "She was keeping to herself," Sakura says. "You've been busy with Temari-san and Chouji's been learning how to run his family since his dad formally stepped down. She's never learnt to put herself over everyone else."

Not even over her village. That, Sakura thinks, with a sinking realization, is likely what Ino has been up to. Self-preservation has never been Ino's strongest point. Of course Ino would put herself last.

From the way Shikamaru looks, like he's swallowed a lemon, he's come to the same conclusion and likes it not at all. 

"She should have said something," he murmurs and she wonders if he's trying to convince himself or her or even Ino, who isn't here to hear this.

"Why should she?" Sakura says, feeling like she's drowning despite not being under water. "We were all busy with our own lives and she was playing support to them."

Shikamaru grimaces. "She's been around less than usual lately."

"Because of me," she says, "and because of you and because of her missions." Sakura still doesn't know what those missions have been. What missions were so important that they had to be run by a sick shinobi?

"Because of you, I get," he says, frowning at her. "And because of her. What's this about me?"

Sakura looks at him. She's never been sure what Ino sees in him but, as Ino has never been sure what Sakura has seen in Kakashi, they've both agreed to disagree. It's never mattered. She wonders if it has mattered, now, in ways that she doesn't fully understand. Ino and Kakashi are in this together after all.

Shikamaru's face is a study in contrasts. She remembers him calling her a talentless kunoichi with no specific ability, once upon a time. She hadn't been able to say anything (though she'd grimaced something horrible) because back then, it had been true. The only thing she'd had was her intelligence and even that had been wasted on paying more attention to a boy than on learning more jutsu to keep herself and her team safe.

"Sometimes," she says, "you're the idiot."

It's gratifying to be able to say that and mean it and know that it's true. Sakura has no idea how Shikamaru can ask that to her and honestly not see how it's partly his fault.

"Ino hasn't been around you," she says, "because she's liked you for years and you're with Temari-san now. How do you think she feels?"

He looks dubious. "Ino isn't the sort to just--"

"Give up? Shut up?" Sakura finishes for him. "She's not. But she's the sort to want people to be happy. You've been happy. She weighed that and made up her own mind. Just--just like she's done with this, though I don't know how."

A dreadful thought occurs to her: what if part of the reason Ino has caved so gracefully to Temari and Shikamaru's relationship is because Ino doesn't think she's got the _time_ to properly make a rivalry of it? 

Sakura relists the symptoms to herself. 

It's plausible, she realizes, heart sinking. And it makes sense, leaves a knot tight and cold in her stomach.

There's a swirl of leaves and Temari stands on the platform with them. Sakura's not sure if she's grateful for the interruption or not. She's absolutely sure that she doesn't want to talk to Temari about Ino's feelings for Shikamaru. 

Now that she's blurted it out, she feels guilty enough talking to Shikamaru about it.

And yet, she can't stop the shivers that make her think that, yes, talking to Shikamaru was the right idea. Sakura is smart. People call her a genius in her field. Shikamaru is a genius in _his_ field and if anyone can spot the plot and figure out what's going on from the information that Sakura's got… he can. He has to be able to.

"What's the situation in the village?" Shikamaru asks Temari.

"Tense," Temari says shortly. "People are worried about the idea of their Hokage sending them out on missions while ill, especially when it's the Hokage's protégé that was going around shouting about it."

Sakura winced. No, there was no way to bury this mess under the rug and forget about it.

"And ANBU?"

"They've allowed us to have custody of her." Temari jerks her head in Sakura's direction. "For the moment, she's free to move around so long as she's with us. On orders from the Hokage."

Sakura's brow furrows. That makes no sense. A quick glance at Shikamaru says that he's as caught off-guard as she is. "Well," he says slowly, "that does make it easier. You up to a puzzle?"

"Something puzzles _you?_ " Temari sounds intrigued as she leans against one of the supporting trees. "Try me, sure."

Shikamaru glances at Sakura again--his look is one she can't read--and then he turns to Temari and begins explaining everything Sakura's told him, making certain to differentiate between fact and conjecture and how they've theorized things as they stand. 

Sakura sits and listens and despite all of her upset (she's still shaking, she's still trembling) part of her marvels over Shikamaru's memory recall. She wonders if he realizes that he's mimicking her tone and inflections. If he knows that, he gives no indication of it.

One thing surprises her: he tells Temari about Ino's feelings for him and doesn't even look uncomfortable about doing so. 

Sakura feels a pang of anger for that. He should, at the very least, feel bad about that, she thinks, and she's not sure what good knowing that would do when added with the rest of the evidence.

She darts a glance at Temari but the other kunoichi's face is distant and faraway. Sakura doesn't really want to know what Temari thinks. When they move the conversation into murmurs she tunes it out and pulls out the journal she and Ino have been sharing. She flips back to read what Ino wrote before.

_Sakura, I know you're confused about pretty much everything right now. I'm sorry for that. I just want to let you know that I'll always be on your side._

_Love, Ino_

Sakura swallows the lump in her throat and wonders how much Ino means what she's written here. She pulls out the pink pen and, after rereading the words again, begins writing down her new questions for Ino. It's futile--how will Ino get this journal?--but it makes her feel better to ask her what she's doing and why and what does she have to do with Kakashi? 

Sakura's pen stills at that.

According to Ino's report, Kakashi is clinically insane. 

She wonders when he went insane. She wonders if it's even true that he did. She wonders if Ino has kept that from her for a long time and if that's why Ino has never liked Kakashi all that much.

Sakura writes those questions down before she can think better of them. They're not very fair questions. Even if she gets answers, she doesn't know if she'll be able to trust them. 

"Haruno," Temari says, impatience in her voice. "Would you care to join the conversation?"

Sakura blinks up from her writing, realizing for the first time that, yes, the hum of talk from the other two has subsided and they're both looking at her with varying degrees of impatience. "Sorry," she says, flushing. "I was just--" she falters, "--writing to Ino."

Shikamaru's face tightens. "To Ino?"

Her flush deepens. "We've been passing a journal back and forth, that's all. I don't know that she'll get it back, this time..."

There's no certainty in her any longer and that's hard to swallow when she's so tired of upheavals in her life. Everything she's known has been turned upside down and how is that fair?

 _Chin up, Forehead,_ Ino's voice murmurs in her head, with a soft laugh that sends shivers down Sakura's arms. _Life isn't fair._

"Ino?" she blurts, her head snapping up. Sakura climbs to her feet, the journal falling to her feet, the pen clenched in one hand. "Where are you?"

"Haruno?" Temari says, like she's certain Sakura's gone insane.

"It might be her," Shikamaru says, sounding disgruntled. "I've told you some of what the Yamanaka can do."

Temari nods shortly.

Ino doesn't say anything further. Sakura turns to them. "She sounds--so tired," Sakura says, sounding lost and hating herself for it.

"Not surprising," Shikamaru grunts. "If she's been ill and maintaining a Kage Bunshin for days. Even with support that's a massive drain on her chakra that she can't afford."

Sakura picks up their journal and stuffs in it her bag. Temari's eyes follow it and Sakura bristles under the gaze. "There's nothing in here that would help," she snaps.

"I never said there was," Temari says dryly, with a shake of her head. 

"In any case," Shikamaru says, looking thoughtful. "We need more information. If Ino is working on orders--and there's no reason to think that she's not--then we have to consider whether we have the right to interfere."

"Of course we do!" Sakura says furiously. "Ino is sick, maybe even _dying_ , and she shouldn't be on active duty. Do you even _care?_ "

Shikamaru's gaze freezes her in place. She's seen Ino go icy before. She's never seen him go so _still_. It's scary. "Ino is a big girl," he says, his voice carefully controlled and measured.  
She can't tell what he's feeling underneath them, except that he's very very angry right now. "She's made her own decisions about this. Hokage-sama knows her condition and has still placed her on active duty. There must be reasons for this. Moving before we know what these reasons are would likely prove disastrous."

"In any case," Temari says, "we don't know enough. What is Project Rin? How does this tie into Hatake's madness and the fact that he got back from his mission a week late? How did your Hokage _know_ that Project Rin would be needed? Who developed it?"

Sakura's hands shake. Her mind knows these are good questions, smart questions: the ones that she should be asking. 

But all she's thinking about is the hug that Ino gave her, promising that it would all be alright and the list of things that Sakura had told her she'd feel if she lost Ino too, so soon after losing Kakashi.

After, she reminds herself, giving up Kakashi. And now she doesn't even know how much of that was _her_ making the decision.

That puts a bit of steel in her spine and she swipes furiously at her eyes. "We should locate Kakashi first," she says. "Unless he's already been taken into custody by Hokage-sama, he'll be the easier one to track than Ino. He might know some of what's going on."

Shikamaru and Temari exchange a glance.

She knows Shikamaru hasn't forgiven her for saying what she did about him and Ino when it's Temari who speaks up. "We'll head there."

Shikamaru nods, rubbing at his face. As they head out, Sakura hears him murmur something about wishing Chouji was here, but he's out on a mission and unreachable.

Sakura, for her part, tries to tell herself that this will go better, has to go better, that the sinking feeling in her heart thinks it will. 

Kakashi hadn't been himself last time they'd spoken, not until Ino had gone.

What did that even mean? 

Sakura forces the despair--and the quiet fear, under it all, of what her punishment will be when this is said and done--away. They need information more than they need her falling apart.

How many mistakes has she already made?

Sakura can't count them.

* * *


	11. Accelerando

* * *

The Hokage's waiting room is dull.

It's not a room he's been in often and as Kakashi leans against a cool wall--cool even through his clothes--watches as Naruto fidgets in one of the hard plastic chairs, he thinks that he could have forgone the pleasure of this room today.

What was the point of them being precisely on time to the meeting that Tsunade-sama had requested only for her to not be available? Kakashi broods over the question and his failure to come up with an adequate answer other than 'because she, his Hokage, had ordered him to'.

Aiko, the receptionist, had waved them into the waiting room thirty minutes ago. He glances at the scroll in his hands and frowns. The scroll made it sound urgent.

Waiting out here is unusual. That fact niggles at him.

Naruto fidgets again and Kakashi resists the urge to throw the scroll at him.

"Hey hey," Naruto says, "what sort of job do you think we'll get?"

"I don't know," Kakashi says. "It doesn't really matter."

Naruto gives him a side-long, dubious look, as if to say that it might not matter to _Kakashi_ what sort of mission Hokage-sama has in mind for them but that it matters to _Naruto_. Kakashi half-expects Naruto to say something along those lines and it looks like for a few moments that he might. 

He doesn't. He just shakes his head and goes back to fidgeting on the chair.

Kakashi wonders idly how Naruto expects to ever manage as Hokage--everyone knows that Tsunade-sama has him in mind as her successor--when he can't even sit still for a few minutes. How will he handle sending good ninja out on missions where they're likely to die? How will he deal with endless meetings with advisors and councillors where he has to listen to them and can't just ignore them?

At least, he thinks, Sakura will be able to help him.

Sasuke should have been too but Kakashi shuts down that line of thought firmly. He doesn't need to dredge up _that_ particular issue. 

Naruto tilts his head back, pressing the top of his head against the wall and looks, for a moment, more like the kid he'd been once upon a time than the man he is now. Kakashi scoffs and looks away--he's getting sentimental in his old age.

Had it been sentimentality that had him saying Rin's name in his sleep? Kakashi resists the urge to shake his head and tells himself that whatever went wrong with their relationship... it wasn't just him that messed it up. Putting it back together will be about the both of them.

And how could he have stopped himself from speaking in his sleep? Kakashi has no answer to that and, in order to stop thinking about it, he glances at Naruto again.

Naruto has an expression of concentration on his face. His head is still pressed against the wall and Kakashi doubts he would notice anything unless someone kicked the chair out from under him.

What is he thinking about? Kakashi wonders. It's rare to see Naruto so focused on something that isn't a new jutsu or something to do with becoming Hokage. 

Kakashi enjoys needling Naruto about everything a Hokage has to do and saying that Naruto can't handle it. 

The fact of the matter is that Naruto is doing better than Kakashi would have ever predicted when it comes to learning the ropes from Hokage-sama.

Kakashi looks at Naruto's intent expression and finds that it's tempting, more than tempting, to irritate Naruto by getting his attention. Kakashi refuses to give into the urge which is, admittedly, entirely childish. 

He blames the fact that he even has that as an urge on stress. 

If he's going mad then it makes sense that he'd regress too. 

(Though even has a child he hadn't been much of one for pranks.) 

Naruto shifts and opens his blue eyes. There's an expression in them that Kakashi can't define, only for a few seconds, before Naruto shakes his head and is grinning again.

Kakashi feels unsettled by the other look. Had it been regret he'd seen? Sorrow? Steely resolve?

Some of all of the above?

The only other time he can think of where Naruto might have looked like that is... is when dealing with Sasuke. Has Naruto been thinking about him, here and now? 

He's known that Sakura has and hasn't been--her feelings are so mixed when it comes to Sasuke that when the news had come that he'd been killed she hadn't even cried.

But Naruto had been the one to do it.

Kakashi wonders if anyone ever bothered to see if he was doing okay. Kakashi hasn't.

He hovers, not sure what to say, not sure if he _should_ say something, because what if he's wrong and he doesn't have the right thing in mind and that just makes Naruto worse?

This is why, Kakashi thinks, he's never been very good at peoples' feelings. It's much easier to deal with them when they're not emotional. He makes the effort for Sakura and for a few other people. Naruto hasn't been one of those people and Kakashi knows that's his fault, not Naruto's.

Naruto wriggles his foot impatiently and Kakashi darts a look at the clock on the wall that's been tick-tick-ticking all the way through his thoughts and arches one eyebrow himself.

They've been here for three-quarters of an hour.

"Man," Naruto says, "the old lady isn't very punctual today, is she?"

Kakashi doesn't bother to dignify that with a response. Naruto is right, of course, but agreeing with him feels a little too much like whining. Instead, he eyes the clock and considers all the reasons that the Hokage could be late to a meeting she arranged and likes none of them.

The best ones are that she's been held up by a council meeting. That's happened before. Kakashi can't help but wonder, now, with everything going on if what's really happened is something to do with people getting ill.

That's less of a good thing by far.

He doesn't get too far down that path of thought because just as he's turning to fully consider it in light of all the meager information he has about the situation—he should have more and knows it but the last few days have been really weird ones, even for him—the door opens.

He hears Aiko-san chirp a greeting to the Hokage as she stalks past.

Tsunade, the Fifth Hokage, looks as beautiful as always. What isn't so usual is the way her chakra has unfurled about her body--he can't see it, but he can feel it and he doubts there's a ninja in the village who doesn't feel it now—as she wears her power like a cloak. Her eyes snap with fire and he seriously hopes that he has nothing to do with whatever has roused her ire.

He doesn't think it could be the break up. That's a comfort. She'd been quite usual when she'd treated his cut and she'd already known about the break up that Sakura had done. It can't be that.

Of course not, Kakashi thinks, as he straightens and even Naruto stands up, because a break up has nothing to do with the village as a whole. 

"Hatake, Uzumaki, in my office. Now."

Naruto blinks, eyes wide. Kakashi, for his part, can't blame him. When is the last time that she's called Naruto by his last name? He can't remember. 

They exchange a look as Tsunade sweeps past them, through the opposite door, and heads down the hall to her office.

"We shouldn't keep her waiting," Kakashi says, his voice pitched so it won't carry to Tsunade-sama. 

"No," Naruto replies, looking troubled. His brows are furrowed as they follow their Hokage. 

They pass the two Chuunin who guard the doors to the office and Kakashi is mildly amused to note that they look as shell-shocked as he and Naruto feel. Perhaps, Kakashi thinks, it won't be so bad to be sent out of the village while she's in such a temper. Whatever—whoever--has put her in that mood... he pities them. Their Hokage is not the forgiving sort once she is really and truly riled up. 

Tsunade is sitting at her desk, going through a few papers, as they shut the door behind them. Kakashi feels the jutsu that keep out most eavesdroppers go active as they come to attention in front of her desk.

She's wearing her robes and hat of office and that makes him think that she's come from a council meeting. Perhaps it was one of the civilians that tripped her temper--they rarely understand the shinobi side of things.

"Good," she says, looking up at both of them. "It is currently 11:37, 27/05. Location: Hokage chamber. In attendance are: Tsunade, Fifth Hokage (Ninja Registration No. 002302), Hatake Kakashi (Ninja Registration No. 009720), and Uzumaki Naruto (Ninja Registration No. 012607)." 

A tiny machine is recording her every word. Kakashi knows this without being able to see it. If she's beginning the briefing this formally he knows it is being recorded. That's protocol.

Kakashi wonders how important this mission is, for her to personally brief them. 

Her brown eyes still burn with emotion. "This mission was pre-assigned due to the need of a specific skill set."

Naruto straightens and Kakashi nods his head slowly.

"This is a search and rescue mission," Tsunade says, her voice clipped. "Your objective is to retrieve Miyagi Ran and bring her back."

Naruto flinches and Kakashi glances sidelong at him. There's no denying the shock on Naruto's face. 

Does he know Miyagi Ran? Kakashi doesn't know and puts the question away to ask later as Tsunade goes on. 

As he listens, a tiny part of him mulls over Naruto's reaction and finds himself glad for the distraction. Miyagi… 

He can't help but think that the past is coming back to haunt him. It's not Rin's ghost this time.

But that was her last name.

As Hokage-sama outlines what's known about the situation, how urgent this mission is, where Ran was last seen (in Tanzaku Gai, two days run from the village) and what they know about why she might have been taken, Kakashi commits it all to memory.

That's easy enough to do on auto-pilot as he hopes that this 'Ran' isn't someone that Naruto loves. Let her just be an acquaintance, he thinks, because adding love into a mission has always complicated things. 

He can't help glancing at Naruto every now and then. Because of his inattention, or perhaps because of his attention, Kakashi sees Naruto nod at one point, looking resolute but terrible.

Tsunade-sama's tiny return nod is equally grim. 

And why not? Kakashi thinks. This mission, like most search and rescue missions, has many things that can go wrong.

They don't even know if this Miyagi Ran is alive now let alone if she'll be alive two days from now when they reach Tanzaku Gai. 

"Any questions?" Tsunade-sama asks as she winds the briefing down. 

Naruto shakes his head, looking troubled. Kakashi, after a moment, does the same. It's tempting to ask why she's sending Naruto but he'll grill Naruto first. And Naruto, out of everyone Kakashi knows, has always managed to complete a mission even when his emotions are on the line.

His only failure was Sasuke.

"Alright," she says. "Before you leave--Hatake, do you have anything for me?"

"No," he says, glad he's past the age where he'd flush with shame at such a failure. "There's rumours through the village that people are getting incurably ill, but no one has any proof. That's all."

He feels like that's an utterly inadequate report for what she'd asked him to do and waits for her to say so. She'd be fully within her rights to tell him that.

She doesn't. 

"Alright," she says again. "Get going. I want the both of you out of the village within fifteen minutes."

Kakashi thanks every star he's ever slept beneath for the fact that he armed himself fully before going to see Kurenai this morning. He'll have to stop at his apartment to grab a few more things but everything is packed. That's easy enough.

They can do it in fifteen, easily, if Naruto is as prepared as he is.

Both of them bow. Naruto still looks troubled. He doesn't miss the glance the two of them share and wonders if this isn't a test for Naruto. A Hokage can't let their emotions interfere. Even if they want them to.

The walk out of Tsunade's office is done in silence. Once they hit the lower level of the building, they both disappear in a swirl of leaves. Kakashi isn't surprised when he reappears out on a building maybe a block away from the Hokage Building that Naruto is only a rooftop away.

"How much time do you need?" Kakashi asks, sauntering over. "To get ready."

"Five," Naruto says. "I've got most of what I need on me. You?"

"Same," Kakashi replies. "Split up and meet here in five?"

Naruto nods and before the motion is finished has disappeared in another swirl of leaves. Kakashi considers the reasons why Naruto would be so down over a mission and then does the same.

He'll figure it out on the way.

His apartment is exactly the way he'd left it and that makes it even easier to grab his extra kit of medical supplies--he's no medic nin and has never wanted to be one, but if they're rescuing someone... they might need more than he usually carries. He knows basic first aid.

Kakashi wonders how much Naruto knows.

Grabbing a few more weapons (there's no such thing, he reminds himself, as having too many weapons on the field) he tucks them away and disappears again. He beats Naruto back to the roof and stands there, under the sun.

He feels good, Kakashi realizes. Like maybe a mission is what he needs after the last few days.

While he waits, he watches the roof-ways and the ninja on them. There's a startling amount of ANBU out and about, he thinks, as they dart over the roofs. 

He thinks that, perhaps, he's discovered the source of Hokage-sama's temper. Kakashi's lips twist. His earlier pity fades. If the ANBU are after a citizen of Konoha then that means they're a traitor.

(ANBU go after nothing less.)

And if ANBU's target is another village's shinobi… he figures that they've got precisely what they deserve coming for them.

Naruto reappears just inside of the five minute mark. He looks like he's splashed water on his face--his hair sticks up worse than usual and his eyes are a little too wide. "Busy," Naruto comments lightly as he notices the ANBU. With a shake of his head Naruto goes serious. "Shall we get going?"

Kakashi nods slowly. "Who is the target to you?" he asks as they begin an easy run over the roofs, heading all the time towards the west exit of the village.

Naruto is silent for a few steps, no more than a few seconds. "I'll be able to do the mission," he says. "Don't worry about that, Kakashi-sensei."

Which doesn't answer Kakashi's question at all. 

He sighs through his mask and let's it go. There'll be time in the next two days to pry it out of Naruto. There's no way they're reaching Tanzaku Gai before he knows more about the situation. He doesn't need an ugly surprise showing up in a rescue mission.

Naruto stays unusually silent and Kakashi can't help but glance at him from time to time as they leave the village and only stops as they make it past the village walls, and pick up their pace to fall into the ground-eating run of shinobi on the job as they head towards Tanzaku Gai. Kakashi feels like he's missing pieces of the puzzle and that worries him.

Who is Ran? How is she connected to Naruto? They take to the trees, running silently long wide branches and leaping in deadly grace from bough to bough.

He promises himself to ask at their next break. Talking now would be an invitation to be ambushed and so he doesn't. Besides, Kakashi doesn't like to admit it, not even to himself, but there's a growing tightness in his chest and a shortness of breath that he doesn't think has anything to do with the speed of their run.

(He's been running and has run faster for years; this pace is utterly nothing to him.)

He makes a leap from one tree to another and then has to pause for a split second, that Naruto doesn't notice, because around him the trees have split and multiplied and are wavering in his sight.

It's like he's getting used to having only one eye active all over again.

Only worse because he's having trouble breathing.

Kakashi struggles to regulate his airflow as each step-and-leap takes him further from the village and, after the trees keep growing and don't stop separating, he drops down to the ground level. He'll be able to run easier down there, he thinks, and with less of a risk of breaking his neck should he misstep.

"Kakashi-sensei?" Naruto's voice floats down from the trees above and even as unwell as he feels Kakashi can hear the concern.

Kakashi waves it off. Gives Naruto the signal for 'all clear'. 

He's sure it's nothing. The rage—his unfamiliar rage--murmurs and bubbles just under the surface of his thoughts and _it_ thinks it would be a bad thing to tell Naruto. A moment of weakness that it can't afford.

Kakashi doesn't understand. He opens his mouth to tell Naruto he's having difficulties and a second later finds himself shaking his head. 

There's no reason to tell Naruto. It's nothing. He's likely just out of shape a bit because he hasn't had the chance to properly rest from his last mission.

That's got to be it.

(The rage murmurs quietly.)

Despite knowing that it's nothing—that certainty is unusual but quite firm--Kakashi pauses and Naruto lands in the undergrowth beside him. 

"We breaking now?" Naruto asks.

"For a moment," Kakashi says, his voice strained to his own ears though Naruto gives no sign of noticing anything. 

(Of course he wouldn't. Nothing _is_ wrong.)

Naruto nods and stretches, doing exactly what he should. Kakashi takes a moment, between breaths that aren't doing as much as they should for him, to admire the fact that Naruto has grown up into a shinobi that he thinks any village would be proud to have.

That's a comfort. Kakashi isn't sure why though. He's perfectly capable of handling this mission on his own.

"Alright," Kakashi says, once the tightness in his chest has eased a little. "Let's carry on. We'll go a little further before our next stop in order to make up for this unexpected break."

"Sure thing," Naruto says with the easy confidence of someone who could run for a day without stopping and still be good to go.

Kakashi knows that most times, most missions, he can do the same. He's got a funny feeling that this isn't going to be one of those missions. 

(But nothing is wrong.)

They set out again, Kakashi picking their pace and keeping it fast but steady--nowhere near as fast as they can go--as Naruto flits around him like a butterfly only a thousand times more deadly.

He can't muster the energy to tell Naruto to cut it out. And, in reality, Kakashi can acknowledge that Naruto is doing something useful.

It's not like Kakashi is keeping that great an eye on their surroundings.

Not when his blood is pounding in his ears and his vision is doubling, tripling, and his chest hurts again. He knows he's not injured--Tsunade-sama herself had given him a clean bill of health a few days ago--but everything hurts nonetheless.

The pain gets worse with every step they take from the village.

He staggers to a stop ten minutes later.

Naruto's voice--another worried question--echoes through his skull penetrating and utterly unanswerable. Kakashi has a moment to think that stopping, maybe, has helped as the pain ebbs.

He has a second to feel relieved and then the pain explodes through his body and turns his vision silver-white with stars of agony as he collapses on the ground.

Leaves and branches and more crunch under his body as he tries to scream and can't. The muscles in his neck of locked up and his throat is closing, swelling; he's suffocating. Acid—or what feels like acid—burns, eats, through his veins with agonizing precision and he writhes futilely, unable to do anything more.

He can't escape what's under his skin. The world spins around him like a nightmare-ish kaleidoscope.

In a moment of odd clarity, when everything is spinning around him and the world has narrowed to pain and more pain, Kakashi sees the way Naruto stares down at him, blue eyes steady and determined.

He doesn't understand.

Then the pain takes even that thought away from him.

* * *

Naruto stares down at Kakashi's twitching body. The moment Kakashi's eyes slide closed, pain mingled with blissful oblivion in his expression, Naruto reaches into one of his pouches and draws out a syringe. 

He jabs it into Kakashi's thigh, straight through the fabric, and watches his former sensei. Kakashi's breathing evens out. His tremors calm. 

Naruto hates this.

He tucks the empty syringe back in his pouch—no way is he leaving evidence just lying about—and taps his right temple, the way Ino has taught him to trigger their connection. 

Her voice, achy and drowsy comes asking what he wants a few seconds later. 

"We've got Stage 1 of R.A.N. initiated out here," Naruto says, in response to Ino's query. "I'm taking him to the rendezvous point. It's still at point--"

She interrupts him, supplying him with the number.

Naruto's lips curve into a faint smile as he hoists Kakashi-sensei up over his shoulder. Kakashi is tall but light enough that it's not a strain to carry him. "Thanks," he says, careful to leave off names. Careful to leave off anything that would let a listener know he cares about who he's talking to.

 _Be careful you don't get infected,_ Ino's voice murmurs in his mind. There's a hitch of her voice then and he waits patiently knowing that she's coughing so hard, on the other end of the line, that she can barely breathe. Her voice, when she resumes speaking (thinking? Naruto has never been able to differentiate between them) is thinner and a little weaker. _You know how dangerous this is._

"I'll be fine," he says, to reassure her. He wishes he dared to ask for the same assurance from her but she wouldn't lie, not to him, not when the rest of her life is lies, and he can't bear to hear the truth he already knows. He doesn't ask. "Remember? My _passenger_ really doesn't care for illnesses."

That leaves her smiling—it's true that Kyuubi has kept him safe so far, after all--and he hoists Kakashi a little more securely over his shoulder and then heads off at a lope that leaves him less than a blur as he runs.

He runs back towards the village, but at an angle. The way they'd left won't be the way they go back.

Running, Naruto thinks, is a good way to keep him from thinking too much about everything that makes his heart hurt. He misses the days where it had just been his head that hurt when he'd thought.

But things have gotten more complicated since those days and he's had to get more complicated to deal with them. He's just glad he's had such good teachers.

"Don't worry," he tells Kakashi's body. "If this all goes well, the old lady thinks there's a good chance you'll survive."

He doesn't tell Kakashi's body that the good chance is less than one in a hundred.

Naruto doesn't like thinking about that either. Not when it's the best shot they've got.

Back when he'd been a child he'd thought he'd understood the meaning of sacrifice. Now, at twenty-two, he finds that he's got so much to learn about it still.

 _It's to protect the village,_ he tells himself. _That's the important thing._

And how could he give anything less than his best when he knows someone who has given up far more for the same cause?

Naruto smiles grimly as he runs.

He can't. He's never been able to give anything less than his all.

* * *


	12. Grazioso

Kakashi isn't in his apartment. 

Sakura knows they're already too late but says nothing as Shikamaru curtly tells her to search for any clues as to his whereabouts. His mission packs are gone. She knows what that means. From the grim cast to Shikamaru's face, he knows what that means too.

Temari, as always, remains inscrutable.

(Sakura doesn't understand what Shikamaru sees in Temari. She's both deadly and lovely but she's so cold.)

She hopes Kakashi really is off on a mission and not caught up in this… mess. Not right now. Which is a silly hope but one that buoys her as she pokes through Kakashi's bathroom for 'clues'. She finds enough drugs (primarily painkillers), including three that he shouldn't have, to kill half the Konoha.

But, frankly, that's not unusual in the village and Sakura deems it acceptable and after making sure there's nothing else that's unusual in the bathroom she heads down to the bedroom. Behind her, Sakura can hear Shikamaru and Temari taking part the living room and kitchen.

Kakashi's bedroom makes her throat ache with memories and she wonders again if her breaking up with him had even been _her_ idea. 

Had it been Ino's?

Sakura isn't sure what she wants the answer to that to be. Neither sits comfortably with her. Her reasons for breaking up with him had felt so _solid_ \--but that's the way Yamanaka are supposed to make it feel, if they're messing with someone's mind. She knows this. Ino is her best friend.

(Still is, despite everything. Sakura wants answers, but that doesn't change anything else; Ino would never do something like this without a good reason or five, and orders from the top.)

Her search is decidedly lackluster in Kakashi's bedroom. It was her idea to come to his place and now… she doesn't know where to go from here, since Kakashi has already left. She sits down on his bed and pulls her and Ino's journal out of her bag.

Flipping through the pages, she comes to the end and just stares at all her accusing questions. Sakura bites her lip and glances around the room.

And freezes.

She gets up carefully, sliding the journal back into the bag, and peers around the furnace grate. There had been a light there, she's sure of it. An unnatural light, different from the sunlight that streams in through the window, unfettered by curtains.

Kneeling by the grate, Sakura pries it off the wall. It's stuck fast but it's no match for her strength, not after years of training with Tsunade-shishou. She sets aside the grate, placing it down silently—not because there's need to do so but because it'd be sloppy to let it clang—and sits back on her ankles.

The tiny video recorder taped to the inside of the grate looks harmless.

It makes her blood run cold. Kakashi had been under observation. Sakura gets up, leaving the grate off, and begins to search the room again—this time, thoroughly.

She finds three more recorders and is working on revealing another before Shikamaru looks in on her. Sakura says nothing as she finishes detangling the latest recorder from the back of Kakashi's night table. Shikamaru comes up behind her and watches her work.

Without looking at him, she knows he's glancing around the room, where she's left the other records visible. He lets out a low whistle.

"The kitchen's clean," he says, as his way of acknowledging that the bedroom really, really isn't.

"They had him under observation," Sakura says, frowning. "While he slept. But I don't understand why they wouldn't have done the same while he was awake."

The dossiers hadn't said anything about that. Shizune hadn't said anything about that. For the first time, Sakura contemplates exactly how much Shizune might _not_ have known. 

It's a scary thought.

She gets up. "I think that's all of them," Sakura says. "Five cameras to watch a man sleep. In a lab setting that would make sense but… this isn't a lab."

That makes her pause.

Shikamaru meets her eyes, the same thought dawning in his gaze. "That means there's a lab somewhere."

Sakura nods. "Yeah," she says. "And if Ino's as sick as she should be, that's probably where she is. I'd know if she was in the normal hospital, even the restricted rooms. There's no way I'd miss her chakra signature. Or Kakashi's."

Or Naruto's. She still doesn't know what to think of him being involved. 

What's going on? Why wasn't she in on the project, especially if all her important, precious people are?

Had Kakashi known anything? Looking around the room, Sakura thinks that he hadn't, though it seems hard to believe that he wouldn't have noticed the cameras.

A frown creases Shikamaru's face and she knows the echo to it is on hers.

"Have you cut the power to any of them?" he asks.

She shakes her head. "No point," she says. "Not when we have what amounts to permission to snoop and it would have been too late by the time the first camera was found to use stealth. I wasn't very cautious entering the room. They," whoever was watching the feeds, "would have known I'd found one right away."

"And they're recording everything we do and say now," Shikamaru says. "Let's not stay here."

He leaves the room and Sakura follows, giving another look to the room, before closing the door behind her.

She finds Temari seated at the kitchen table, arms crossed as Shikamaru murmurs over a hastily formed shadow-map of the bedroom to her. They both glance at her and she sits awkwardly at the table.

Right. She's their captive.

Which—okay, that was melodramatic. They're her babysitters until… Sakura wonders what will be decided. How long are they going to be left to look into things? It's clear that they're not supposed to but, at the same time, they did have permission of a sort...

Giving another look at Shikamaru and Temari, hating them just a little, she pulls out the journal again and flips to the back page.

Underneath her accusations and questions, there's more writing. Ino's writing. Sakura forces herself to keep breathing and not look shocked.

Temari snorts—at her lack of input in the conversation, Sakura thinks—and ignores them.

 _Forehead,_ Ino writes, _why did Shizune tell you anything?_

She stares down at the writing and wonders how it even got there. She hasn't put the journal down since she last looked at it and Ino hasn't been anywhere near it.

The question is one that she doesn't know the answer to. Twirling her pen around her fingers, Sakura debates writing that in. Would Ino answer her?

Or is it a goad?

Or… something timed to appear.

She knows there's jutsu that can do that, even though she's never mastered them. They're fiddly in ways that make her brain ache to think about. Much like her and cooking—she's just never been able to get a handle on them, never been able to move beyond the very basics.

(She'd been lucky that Kakashi had been a good cook.)

It had been Ino, she remembers abruptly, that had taught her about timed jutsu. Hidden ink. Sakura's thoughts race as she keeps her face bland and refuses to let her emotions have control.

_Look underneath the underneath._

The first lesson Kakashi had taught her and the one Ino has invoked with the journal.

Briefly she wonders how many messages Ino has hidden in the book she holds. Sakura bites her tongue and says nothing to her minders.

Ino has left these messages for her. Until she knows more… she'll keep them to herself.

Why _would_ Shizune go behind Tsunade-shishou's back to tell her what was going on? Shizune has been loyal to Tsunade-shishou for longer than Sakura has been alive. 

It doesn't take long for Sakura to connect the dots.

The only reason Shizune would have gone behind Tsunade-shishou's back… is if Tsunade-shishou had ordered it.

She hesitates a moment, then another one because the idea just seems too awful to be true, and then writes that underneath Ino's question. Sakura ignores the way her fingers tremble.

If Shizune did it because of orders, does that mean that Shikamaru and Temari are also part of the situation?

Sakura studies them from beneath lowered eyelids and thinks that Shikamaru's never been that good an actor and if he'd known about this plan then... he hadn't known that Ino was sick. If he knows anything, he doesn't know it all. Temari is harder to read. 

Logically, she knows that Temari shouldn't be in on whatever is going on, because Temari is a Suna shinobi and this, so far, has been an extremely internal affair. 

On the other hand, Temari has pull enough with the ANBU to have kept Sakura from being taken into custody so long as she remains with them. By all rights, she shouldn't be able to do that. Not even as Suna's diplomatic ambassador. 

She puts a mental question mark next to both their names and glances back down at the journal. A smiley face in Ino's purple pen has appeared in the margin. Just that. 

It should be frustrating but Sakura knows what that means. She's on the right track. 

"Should we be staying here?" she asks, closing the journal. "I mean, he's not here. We don't have to stay here, right?"

Shikamaru folds his shadow map back into the shadow of his body absently. "What were you thinking?"

 _Can I trust you?_ she wonders. _Can I trust Temari?_

Sakura knows better than to say that. Or even hint at it. If this is a giant conspiracy and she's in the middle of it, feigning ignorance is the only defence she has until she knows more about what's going on. 

"We could try tracking the signals on the cameras," she suggests. "To where they're feeding the video to."

Temari doesn't smile, though her expression goes less harsh and more... thoughtful. "It has potential," she decrees. "Shikamaru?"

"I'm no good at electronics," he grouses and Temari kicks him in the shin. "Dammit, woman, stop that." Shikamaru rubs his shin and scowls at the both of them. "Do either of you know how to track this sort of thing?"

"I've never done it," Sakura admits. "A chakra pulse through the wiring should be something we can follow though, right?"

"Yeah," Shikamaru says, with a sigh. "If you want to electrocute yourself."

"It should be a job that's perfect for you then," Temari says dryly. "I was going to suggest the same thing as Haruno. What do you have in mind?"

"The same thing she wants," Shikamaru says, getting up and heading towards the bedroom. "Only, the thing is, you've got to match the current with your chakra and that's not easy."

The urge to suggest that she do it is on the tip of her tongue but Sakura bites the urge down and just follows as Shikamaru and Temari bicker about what the frequency of the current could be. If this is part of the trap then volunteering herself would just be ridiculous. It would be walking right into it. 

"Is there anything we should be doing while you're channelling chakra?" she asks, watching as Shikamaru inspects one of the recorders. Temari is leaning against the dresser.

Sakura wants them both out of Kakashi's room with a vehemence that surprises her. It's ridiculous, they're not even going through his things--she's the one that had done that and they'd left her to do it alone.

But paranoia keeps ninja alive and she feels like she's going to choke on it. 

"Just keep watch," he says absently, the sharpness of his voice having faded as he concentrates. "If I start smoking, pull me away from the current. Don't throw water on me. That would be bad."

She wrinkles her nose.

Temari looks amused. "We'll try not to let you cook," she says, which earns her a faint smile from Shikamaru.

Sakura just shudders away from the mental image. No thanks. 

They watch in silence as Shikamaru slices the wire that the camera is attached to and holds his finger over it. His eyes fall closed and she waits, feeling his chakra ruffle against her senses like a cloud made tangible. Feeling his struggles with changing the frequency of his chakra, Sakura is glad to not be the one to do this.

"I'm not good with electronics," Temari murmurs disparagingly. "Ass."

"Oh?"

"He's good at this," Temari says, after a pause. "It's just uncomfortable, so he doesn't like doing it."

That figures, Sakura thinks, Shikamaru's always been lazy and if it's not pleasant on top of that, she can see why he'd want to avoid it. "Is it hard to learn?" she asks.

"It's a rare skill," comes the answer. "Adjusting your frequency to match another human's? That's fairly common. There's enough jutsu based on that principle that even if people aren't good at it, they can usually do one or two. It's the fact that it's inanimate that makes this difficult."

"Would the both of you shut up?" Shikamaru asks grouchily. "You're ruining my concentration."

"Sorry," Sakura says softly. Temari just shrugs her shoulders.

Neither of them take their eyes off Shikamaru. Smoking, she thinks, is a very real possibility.

It doesn't happen. After an interminable fifteen minutes, Sakura has never thought she'd grow to hate Kakashi's alarm clock, of all things, but she has while watching it tick by too slowly, Shikamaru opens his eyes.

"What a mess," he says, staggering slightly as his chakra signature wavers all over the place.

"Ground yourself," Temari says sharply. "There's no need to advertise what we've been doing."

He gives her a dirty look, takes a seat on Kakashi's bed (Sakura tells herself she's not allowed to shove him off it, no matter how tempting it is to do; Kakashi would hate a having a stranger on his bed) and breathes.

Slowly, his chakra signature stabilizes and begins to feel the way it should against her senses. 

"What did you find?" Sakura asks when Shikamaru feels back to normal, if a bit tired. 

"It's outside the village," he says, frowning. "Not far, but outside. Underground, I think."

Temari's frown joins his. "We can't leave the village with Haruno."

"Not even if I'm in your presence?" Sakura asks, hating the well of bitterness that bubbles up in her throat.

The other girl shakes her head. Sakura thinks she detects a bit of regret. "Not now. You were spilling secrets without decorum. You know the rules."

The worst part, Sakura thinks, is that Temari is right. She _does_ know the rules. That's why it's so weird that even this—this isn't part of the rules, her being in Kakashi's house, here and now. She doesn't point that out.

"Would you be willing to go?" she asks. "You could turn me over to the ANBU. Or stick me with one of you and have the other go."

"Heading without backup into the unknown doesn't sound like a good use of resources to me," Shikamaru says mildly. "Though I know why you'd suggest it now. Ideas, Temari?"

"Is there anyone you trust with this?" she asks. 

"Chouji," Shikamaru says promptly. "But he's out on a mission. Or Ino but…" he falters and Sakura feels pity for him and another surge of emotion for Ino.

She doesn't know now if she's angry or scared or worried about Ino. A mix of all three and combination settles uncomfortably in her stomach. Kakashi's situation makes her antsy. They need to get to the bottom of this.

It's that thought that leads her to what looks like a possible solution. It might turn out very badly, she knows, but it would get something done and Sakura thinks if they have to linger in the apartment for much longer that she might scream.

"Let's go straight to Tsunade-shishou," Sakura says. "If you can't leave me with her, you can't leave me with anyone."

Temari and Shikamaru exchange glances. 

"That's not particularly subtle," Temari murmurs.

"But it could work," Shikamaru concedes, sounding disgusted. "We were so caught up in getting around problems that cutting right through didn't occur to us." He fixes dark eyes on her face. "You do know that it could go very badly?"

Sakura thinks of Ino, of Naruto, of Kakashi, of Shizune, and swallows the urge to start laughing and never stop. "I know," she says. "I don't know what I'm walking into but I know that much."

He nods. "All right," Shikamaru says. "Let's go."

* * *

Less than half an hour is all it takes for them to navigate through the village and through the administrative buildings to reach Tsunade-shishou's office. It would have taken them less time, but they'd gone slowly, to keep from rousing interest in other shinobi. The guard Chuunin watch them as they approach the door.

Sakura wonders if they're keeping her in the dark about something too. 

She wonders if she's becoming paranoid and then dismisses the thought. As a kunoichi of Konoha, she's already supposed to be paranoid.

It's just not very comfortable.

"Is Tsunade-shishou in a meeting?" Sakura asks.

"You can go right in," one of the guards tell her. They're a new rotation--the rotation changes every few weeks and she hasn't had time to meet them yet though, clearly, they know who she is. Sakura wishes she knew their names. 

"Thanks," she says, with a smile. It always pays to be polite, she tells herself, even when smiling is the last thing she wants to do.

The inside of Tsunade-shishou's office is comfortingly, and deceptively, familiar. Against her will Sakura feels herself begin to relax, the knot of tangled upset that's taken up residence in her stomach loosening.

All the hours she's spent here, feeling safe and wanted and being taught, have left their mark. She grits her teeth and presses a fingernail to the pad of her thumb. The sharp pain gives her focus without injuring her. 

Tsunade-shishou is leaning back in her chair, the hat of her office carelessly thrown over the back of a lamp, and paper everywhere. Shizune isn't in and Sakura is glad for that. She might do something rash.

(As if this isn't rash enough.)

But words and actions have different degrees of severity. Sakura doesn't know what she's going to say to Tsunade-shishou, as Shikamaru and Temari mouth pleasantries and get them returned, but she knows that if Shizune were here, that she would _do_ something. It's for the best that she's not.

"Tsunade-shishou," she says, "what's going on?"

Shikamaru sucks in a breath. Sakura resists the urge to kick him in the ankles, steeling her heart with the fact that there's no way in hell that Ino would have resisted, and waits.

Tsunade-shishou's eyes are as comforting as ever. Somehow that makes this worse. 

She doesn't invite them to sit down. That helps.

"You're under custody for discussing confidential information in public," Tsunade-shishou says. "I don't think you're on very stable ground already, Sakura. Don't push it."

"Shizune-san was a plant," Sakura says flatly. "I don't believe that she would have betrayed you for me."

That hurts less than it would have a couple years ago, back when she still believed that she should matter to everyone and any rejection hurt so damn much. Now it's just a fact and while it isn't one that she enjoys--she _likes_ Shizune!--it's one that she can look in the face without flinching. 

Progress is ugly.

Tsunade-shishou watches her. Sakura resists the urge to squirm. She believes that she's right. She does.

The silence goes on just long enough for Sakura to begin doubting herself when Tsunade-shishou nods. 

"Temari-san, Nara-kun, you're dismissed."

Shikamaru's face turns grim. 

Sakura knows why: Ino's condition is something that he wants to know more about. He doesn't like being knocked out of the loop, not when he's just discovered that there is a loop he'd been missing. 

He stays silent and controlled though and leaves with a dark look at her, full of significance. Temari-san's expression is harder to read but she goes too. 

Sakura knows that Shikamaru will find her, at some point, and demand more information.

She hasn't heard anything yet that would make her refuse to give it to him. Waiting for Tsunade-shishou to make the next move, Sakura wonders if there's anything that would make her keep that information from Shikamaru.

Orders only go so far. It's something that they all know and don't talk about. Shinobi are supposed to obey the rules, follow their orders, and keep their mouths shut on what they know.

But shinobi are also trained to seek out and discover information, to make connections, and to reflect on what they've figured out. 

"Yes," Tsunade-shishou says, "Shizune was a plant."

Sakura nods and then asks the one question that's been plaguing her about all of this. "Why?"

That 'why' applies to so many things. Sakura doesn't try to narrow it down. The answer she'll get will tell her something--just like the answers she doesn't get will _also_ tell her something. Underneath the underneath. She won't forget, she swears, promising Kakashi and Ino to get to the bottom of this.

Tsunade-shishou smiles wryly. "It was an aptitude test. You passed."

Sakura frowns, uneasy and surprised at the unexpected answer. "What did I need to pass a test for? I bombed on stealth and down the village will have the gossip mill working through any clue that hasn't been accounted for."

"And you'll be facing the consequences for that," Tsunade-shishou replies, looking down at a sheaf of paper in another folder for a second before back up. "That being said, despite the fact that your passing works out well for our intentions, I wish you hadn't passed."

Sakura is baffled. And, increasingly, alarmed. The hairs at the back of her neck raise as she wonders if, perhaps, the reason Tsunade-shishou wanted no witnesses is so that she can be 'gotten rid of' without interference.

There have been Kages who would espouse such treatment. Tsunade-shishou could probably get away with it. 

"What was I passing for?" she asks instead. "How is it connected to Ino and Kakashi?"

There's no question in her mind that it _is_ connected to them.

She wishes she had more weapons on her. It would be suicide to draw them on the Hokage, in her office, when things are already dicey. But having them would make her feel better. Sakura pines for them and catalogues what she does have.

Not enough.

Tsunade-shishou stands. She's not much taller than Sakura is but she's more imposing. Sakura resists the urge to back up a step; for the first time she's scared of her mentor.

It's an _awful_ realization.

The fact that there's resignation in Tsunade-shishou's face just makes Sakura feel even worse. 

"Come with me," Tsunade-shishou says. "If you want answers."

Sakura hesitates.

She's starting to think that the price of the answers is going to be more than she wants to pay.

But she follows. 

It's too late to back out now.


	13. Nocturne

Kakashi wakes up disoriented and alone.

He stares up at the white ceiling, painfully sterile looking and slowly expands his awareness to get a better idea of what's in the rest of the room. It turns out to be just him; there is no one else around. 

That sends alarms all through his body and he realizes, for the first time in what feels like forever, there's no rage throbbing behind his thoughts. Just him. It's like breathing air after being submerged in water long enough to drown.

The rest of the room is just as white, just as clean. The bed he's on is one that would be found in any lab. The sheets are scratchy and starched. There's very little else in the room. A drain in the floor--and the floor is very slightly sloped towards it, which he finds ominous. He tilts his head back, looking for... yes, there's a line of sprinklers hidden in the ceiling. Now that he's looking for them, he can spot the tell-tale holes.

Nothing is on the walls. There's not even a cabinet or a pushcart in the room. Anyone who entered would have to bring everything they needed with them.

Chakra dampeners stick to him like ooze. Invisible and intangible but he feels them, muffling his abilities and leaving him much diminished in terms of offensive and defensive capabilities. Not harmless, no, but weakened.

His weapons are gone. He's been left with a mask, his hitae-ite, and a drafty hospital gown. 

Kakashi appreciates the first two and worries about the last.

If he's in the hospital, it's in no room that he's ever heard breathed of before. 

"What did I drown from?" he asks, testing the sound.

The noise doesn't echo. The room itself is silenced and muffled. Kakashi stretches carefully, working out stiff muscles, and wonders why he's in a room where no one will hear him scream.

He can't remember what happened to place him here. There had been a mission in a swamp and then... and then...

Something about Rin. Something about Sakura…

That's all he remembers.

Kakashi gets up, ties the hospital gown a bit tighter around him (not that it does anything to do so, but it makes him feel a little better) and approaches the door. He feels like he's blind without being able to use his chakra.

The door opens at his touch.

He backs away until he's flush with the bed again and waits.

And waits.

When Kakashi finally decides that nothing is going to enter, he approaches the door again. He listens, hard as he can, for sounds. 

Nothing.

He scents the air, his nose not nearly as sensitive as an Inuzuka's but far more sensitive than an ordinary person's, and gets back nothing but the clean, harsh scents of industrial strength disinfectant and bleach.

Lots of bleach.

Maybe, he thinks wryly, that's why everything is white. Saves on repair costs.

The hallway is just as bland and featureless as his room had been. Kakashi leaves the door open as he ventures slowly down the hall. There's a few doors, spaced evenly apart, on both sides of the hallways. 

No windows in them and when he tries a few of them, he finds that they're all locked.

Except for his.

He tries all of the doors again, still moving silently though that seems increasingly ridiculous to do when there's no one around except for him. It feels like a tomb.

Kakashi hopes it doesn't become his.

What happened to bring him here? He strains his mind, looking for answers that his memory doesn't want to give up.

"That way," Rin says lightly. "Left, then right."

He spins around, falling into a taijutsu stance, and then just _stares_. Rin stands there, her brown hair neat and tidy, her smile gentle, and she looks real. Not insubstantial or ghostly or anything like that.

Real.

She also looks to be about ten years old.

So she _can't_ be real. He knows that, his mind babbles, _it's not possible._

"I'm as real as you are," she says, which reassures him not at all. "Come on, let's get going." 

Kakashi lets her reach and take his hand, falling out of a battle ready stance and looking down at her. Had she always been so small? He supposes so but in his memories, she looms so much larger. She's younger now than when she'd died.

That should just be another warning sign that this isn't real.

Her hand in his is warm and solid.

"It's all right," she says. "I could be leading you somewhere dangerous but I'm not."

He clears his throat, feeling it clogged with something terribly close to tears and hating that. Kakashi's grip on the small hand tightens. 

Rin doesn't protest, even though he knows it must hurt her. After a moment, he forces his grip to loosen. She's not going anywhere. 

"Where are we going then?" he asks.

This has to be a trap. There's no way it can be anything else. Kakashi considers killing this ghost of his past who seems dreadfully and entirely real and discards the idea for now.

For now, he promises himself. He'll revisit the idea if necessary--later.

"Left then right," Rin says, smiling innocently as they walk down the hall, past the doors that Kakashi's has already tried to open to no avail. They stop outside of one more door.

"I've tried this door," he tells her, nostalgia turning his voice gentle. "It's locked."

"Not for me," she says confidently, which doesn't comfort him at all. Rin, rather than trying the doorknob, places the palm of her hand flat on the middle of the door. 

Kakashi memorizes the spot she touches.

The door clicks open.

"How much danger am I in?" Kakashi asks, staring at the door and making no move to go through it. 

He has no faith that Rin will tell him the truth but any answer will give him something to go on. He needs more information.

"I can't tell you what you want to know," Rin replies, looking down. "You're going to have to talk to another me."

Kakashi's frown deepens. "There's only one you, Rin."

Even though it's become apparent that that is dreadfully, terribly, untrue. Rin died.

He's holding a different Rin's hand.

Her eyes are very brown and serious as she looks up at him. "There was never just one of me," Rin says. "Let's go. We're keeping me waiting."

"This isn't possible," Kakashi tells her as she leads him through the door and into another white, many-doored hallway.

When he's out of here, he swears that he's going to paint the walls of his apartment. White is too… empty.

Fear sticks in the back of his throat like the taste of sour apples and old vinegar.

"It's okay," Rin says. "I'm not the danger."

"You're dead," he says gently. "Your presence is a danger I don't understand."

One that upsets and unsettles him and Kakashi is left wondering if that's maybe the _point_. "How many of you are there?"

Rin tilts her head slightly. "I don't know."

She doesn't sound bothered by that. Which is all right. Kakashi is bothered enough for the both of them even though the emotion, like everything else, feels at one remove.

He almost misses the rag--

"Don't," she says, interrupting his thought. "Don't miss it. That wasn't you."

Rin has never been able to read minds.

"It felt real," he says, rather than point out what she was doing. Instead he was filing that information away, analyzing it, and coming up frustratingly blank with a real answer to anything. 

"That's why it's so insidious," Rin says. "It's not gone. If you think about it, it will come back."

"Where did it go?"

"We put it in remission," she tells him. "Temporary. Just so I and myself can talk to you."

They stop outside the last door on the right.

"Are you through here?" he asks, the sentence sounding awkward on his lips.

She looks at him. "I don't know."

Rin is the one who is leading him here, who will tell him where to go, even though Kakashi hates the fact that he's not in control but isn't that exactly what this whole situation is?

A reason to strip him of his control. An exercise in how to do it.

"Are you coming with me?" he asks, loathe to let go of her hand despite knowing all the reasons he should. There's no good reason to want this Rin to stay around.

She's _not_ real.

But she feels real and looks real and sounds real and that's almost good enough for him. _Almost._

"For a little while longer," she says, nodding and then leads him through the door. It requires another press of an invisible panel in the wall, in the same location, and then they're through.

The next hallway is white, painfully so, just like the rest of the place. The largest difference is the lights. They're harsher on the eyes. It makes the place even more unsettling and alien.

Luckily, they're not in the hallway for long. Rin gently tugs him towards a door with a window in it--the first he's seen since coming here. There is steel wire in the window, a precaution against it breaking.

Behind the door is nothing more exciting than a stairwell. 

Kakashi is more relieved than he wants to admit to himself when they enter it--the stairwell is gray, with black non-slip strips at the edge of each step. The railings are a muted yellow. The presence of colour is reassuring.

"Rin," he says. "What do you mean you put it into remission? What is the rage?"

She takes a couple of steps more, heading downwards and ignoring the door on the next floor and Kakashi follows her, before she answers. "It's a type of… parasite," Rin says slowly. "It's a mistake that should have been contained a long time ago."

"I don't understand," he says.

"I'm sorry," she says. "It's my fault."

"It's not. You're dead."

And even if she hadn't been, Kakashi doesn't see how he could blame her for everything that's happened. What hand could she have in this? 

"I am," Rin agrees. "And I'm not. I don't get to rest for a while yet."

He digests this response slowly and then, because as far as he's aware, they're on no deadline, he takes a seat on the stairs. Rin goes down another four to stand on the next landing and then turns to look at him. No surprise shows on her face at his actions.

Kakashi wonders how complete their, whoever they are, information on him is. It's disturbing to contemplate but he does it anyway.

"None of this makes sense," he says, forcibly keeping the irritation out of his voice. He'll save it for someone more deserving than this ghost of a dead girl. "I got... infected?"

She nods.

"All right," he says. "Then Sakura..." Kakashi trails off as the memories come back in fractured detail. "She left me," he says, dismay squeezing his chest tight. "Because... because..."

"Of me," Rin says. 

"You're _dead_ ," Kakashi insists. "She wouldn't leave for that."

"Not usually," Rin tells him. "You and she might have still had a talk about it and had to work a few things out but... Sakura's mind was being influenced."

In a way, Kakashi finds that worse of an idea than him having been infected with... something. Something angry.

For that matter, he's getting plenty angry himself at Rin's revelations and he breathes deeply to control it. He doesn't want to get angry. He doesn't want the rage to come back, not really, not if it means waking up disoriented and confused in a white lab room. Not if it means another trip like this with another Rin.

He wishes Rin had just stayed dead.

Things had be easier then.

It's a horrible, horrible thought and he hates himself for it. He's thought before that he'd give anything to have his team back but--not like this.

"It's all right," she says. "I'm not the teammate you used to know."

"You're not _not_ her though," he accuses.

She doesn't answer him and Kakashi knows he's right. 

"Why was Sakura's mind being influenced?" he asks, instead of continuing that train of thought. "Was it the rage in me changing her?"

Rin tilts her head slightly. "No," she says. "Though it's connected."

He leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees, resisting the urge to bury his face in his hands. Instead, he looks at her levelly. "How is it connected?"

"In order to fix the mistake I made, the conditions need to be replicated," Rin says. "All of this is part of that."

"How much further does this replication go?" Kakashi asks flatly. "What mistake did you make? What's going to happen to those of us caught up in the replication?"

"I'm sorry," Rin says softly. "I'm so, so sorry." She clasps her hands behind her back and regards him. "I can't answer your questions."

"Can't?" he asks. "Or won't."

"Can't," she replies. "I am an imperfect copy of Rin. I do not have the full data. That is not my purpose."

Kakashi stands and gives slow, deliberate thought to killing the girl again.

He still can't do it.

"What's your purpose?" Though he thinks that he already knows.

She holds out one hand to him. "To lead you to a more complete copy."

Walking down the few steps, Kakashi takes the hand despite every part of him shrieking about how that's a horrible idea. He knows that.

But it's Rin.

Somehow, despite everything, that's the difference that makes him move. 

He loves Rin. Differently, he realizes now, than he loves Sakura.

But it's love anyway.

"Lead on," he says. "And tell me, if there's a more complete copy, does that mean there's no such thing as a _complete_ one yet?"

Rin's expression is solemn. "That's right," she says. "That's the most complicated part of the replication. It's almost perfect but almost isn't good enough. We've tried that before and failed." 

Kakashi tries to think of how they could have failed. Of anything in the last few decades that would have indicated something like this was going on. But that's the problem with ninja... there's always going to be secrets.

"This time," she tells him, "we're going to get it right. But it's going to hurt, so I'm sorry."

"Is everyone sorry?"

Not that _sorry_ would change anything but it's an interesting lapse.

"No," Rin says. "They're stronger than I am. This is for the best."

"It hurts," Kakashi says. "What's going to happen to me if your replication fails?"

Rin avoids his gaze and tugs him down another flight of stairs. "I'm sorry," she says. "I cannot answer that."

"You won't," he corrects gently. "It's all right, I know from that answer what you can't say."

He'll die.

Kakashi looks down at his free hand and balls it into a fist. "What's going to happen next?" he asks. 

"You'll talk to the next link," she says. "The closer copy."

"And then what?"

"I don't know."

Rin opens the door leading out into another floor of the lab and Kakashi wonders how many floors there are to this place. How big is it and how had it been hidden for so long?

Then he snorts, amused by his own folly. There's no doubt bigger secrets hidden in and around the village. No one person can know everything, though many of them try, and this lab would have held no interest to him.

Until now it does.

"How much further?" he asks quietly. There's no need to whisper, so he doesn't, but the harsh whiteness of the area forbids him from speaking loudly-- though maybe that's all in his mind. Entirely possible.

How much has been all in his mind? Kakashi toys with the idea that this is all a hallucination or a dream and that he's still in that bed in the room he'd woken up in.

"Not much further now," Rin tells him, seeming to not notice his preoccupation with his thoughts. 

Naruto was involved, somehow, wasn't he? He was… there… 

Kakashi strains his memories, struggling to connect the pieces and succeeding in only giving himself a headache as Rin leads him down another hall and then another. All of them are white and featureless except for the rows and rows of identical doors.

He wonders what's behind all of them.

"Why are my memories so fragmented?" he asks.

She tilts her head up to look at him. "Remission is hard on the mind," Rin explains. "Because the rage was so tangled in your thoughts, when we sent the rage away, your memories went with it."

Kakashi turns that over in his head. He's not a medic-nin but that seems to make sense enough for it to be plausible. "So I shouldn't try to find those memories then?"

Is the fact that some of them have come trickling back a bad sign?

Rin shakes her head. "Some memories will come back," she says, and he knows that his expression must have given away the unsaid question--despite his mask.

But then, Rin had known him for a long time. 

This isn't Rin, he reminds himself sharply. Rin's dead.

"But trying to find them?" he asks again.

"Probably not the best idea," she says agreeably. "It will all make sense soon in any case."

Kakashi highly doubts that and allows his silence speak for him on that matter. 

Rin just smiles, a little sadly, and releases his hand. He takes a few steps more, towards the next door, before realizing that she's not coming with him. He turns to look at her. "What's wrong?"

"I can't go any further," Rin says, clasping her hands in front of her. "You'll have to open the door on your own. You know how."

He does. That's... that's not the point though.

"Why can't you come?" he asks, feeling unaccountably lonely at the idea of leaving behind a copy--a ghost?--of a girl who'd died such a long time ago. 

"It's my time to leave," she says simply. "I've done the job assigned to me. There will be other Rins."

He takes a step towards her and she sucks a breath in. "Don't," Rin says. "Just go through the door."

Kakashi just looks at her.

"I wish that you would listen to me," Rin says. 

Then she crumples, eyes going empty and body going limp.

Kakashi catches her before she hits the floor.

She's dead.

Kakashi stares down at the wide-open eyes that hold no life, at the way her mouth gapes slightly, almost like she's sleeping. Her hair is in disarray, which seems wrong since Rin had always kept it neat. 

Rin's dead. His heart pounds and he reminds himself that he'd already known that, he _had_ , and this had just been a trap someone had made.

It still hurts to see her like this. 

He retraces his steps through the lab until he comes across an empty room with a bed in it--the twin to the room he'd woken up in--and lays her on it. He pulls the sheet up over her, covering her face, and bows his head briefly.

Then he turns, leaves the room, shuts the door behind him and nods when he hears the locks engage. 

Then, because she'd wanted him to, Kakashi goes back to the room where she'd died and places his hand on the invisible pressure square in the middle of the door.

The door opens silently.

Kakashi stands there for a moment and then walks inside. The door shuts automatically behind him and that would bother him more except for the fact that he suspects that the only way out of this place is to move forward, not back.

Unlike the rooms and halls he's walked through, this hallway isn't white. The floor is pale blue tile and the walls are painted cream. There are doors along each wall. None of them have windows. As a contrast, it's startling.

He'd be confused about where to go but there's no need to wonder.

Another Rin, this one even younger, maybe four or five, with her hair in pigtails, like she'd confided to him once that she'd had while in the Academy, sits outside the far left door. In her hands is a doll.

Kakashi pauses for a moment when he realizes the doll is a tiny replication of Minato-sensei. 

Walking up to her, Kakashi kneels down to her level. "Hello Rin," he says.

She looks up and smiles at him. She's missing one of her front teeth and hasn't been given her tattoos yet. This isn't a Rin that he's ever known. Kakashi knows that when her task is over, she's going to die.

He hates that. Hates that someone has done this to a girl already long dead.

And a tiny, desperate part of him is glad for these moments with her. Stolen, bizarre moments he shouldn't have ever been given. They're a gift and they make him angry and sad and glad in about equal measure.

She doesn't speak.

"Where do I go next?" Kakashi asks softly.

Perhaps that is why they used Rin. He could yell at Obito or Minato-sensei. Not at Rin. Not even when he knows it's a trap.

This isn't the closer copy. It can't be.

Tiny Rin gets to her feet, clutching her doll to her chest, and points over his shoulder. 

Kakashi looks.

There's a door there, just like all the other doors. He turns back to Rin to find her watching him with unfocused eyes. Between that and the silence, Kakashi wonders what's wrong with her. "Hey," he says, "did you want to come with me?"

It would be strange for him to leave her behind—especially when he knows what's likely to happen to her. She's a trap and he knows that. He would also rather she die with him around than die alone and forgotten in a lab that no one visits.

Rin lifts her arms up in the universal gesture for 'pick me up!' and Kakashi complies. "No stabbing me," he says, though he can see that she's not armed with anything except the doll. She's left the doll on the ground though and Kakashi debates with himself for a moment before scooping it up and offering it to her.

It's just a toy.

She takes it gravely and hugs it to her chest as he settles her on one hip, cursing himself for an idiot because he _knows_ if he's attacked now, he's more vulnerable.

But Rin is smiling as she rests her head against his shoulder.

Somehow that makes up for a lot, even though it shouldn't. 

"Still no words?" he murmurs.

Rin looks at him and shakes her head.

"Because you can't?" he asks. "Or because you won't?"

She just looks at him solemnly and he wonders if the question is beyond her understanding. He wishes he knew more about the Rin copies.

He wishes he hadn't ever found out about them. How many Rins are there? 

"Well," he says with a sigh, "we'll keep going for now."

What else did he have to lose?

Kakashi banished that thought from his mind as soon as it formed—there was _always_ something else to lose. 

"It can't be much further now, right?" he asks tiny Rin. "Your… big sister said we were close."

She hadn't said exactly that.

Tiny Rin points insistently at the door.

Pressing his hand to the panel, Kakashi opens it and steps through. Another hallway, though this one is also in the pale blue and cream rather than white.

Does this mean he's getting closer to people?

He follows Rin's directions, conveyed through pointing, through two more rooms and one more hallway.

The last door, at the far end of it, has Naruto leaning against the wall beside it. 

"Good work, Rin," Naruto says, looking up as Kakashi approaches. 

Tiny Rin reaches for Naruto, who plucks her out of Kakashi's hold easily.

"What's going on?" Kakashi asks, furious and fighting it—he can't let rage win; he trusts Rin that much—but it's hard, so hard, to throttle the betrayal.

Naruto presses a kiss to the top of Rin's head as the little girl smiles, closes her eyes, and stops breathing. She goes limp against Naruto.

Another Rin gone.

"Come on," Naruto says, opening the door. "You need to talk to Rin. Not her copies."

"Through there?"

Naruto's eyes look haunted. "Yeah."

"I don't trust you."

"I know." Naruto sighs. "I don't blame you and I'm not going to argue with you. It's your choice to go in there or not. Make up your mind soon."

Then he's gone, through the door, and Kakashi is left alone, with not even a copy of Rin to keep him company.

There's not much of a choice. He wants—no, needs—to know what's going on. Even if the smarter option would be to run the hell away and try to escape.

The pressure panel opens the door soundlessly.

There's a small hall behind the door broken by three steps going up and then another door. The floor in here is red, a sharp and abrupt contrast to the blues and whites even though the walls are still cream.

He takes each stair slowly, expecting something to go wrong, and nothing happens by the time he pushes the panel on the next door.

The door behind him closes and locks even as the door in front of him opens. Like they're connected and only one can be open at any one time.

The next room looks like any room that could be found in the long-term care wards of Konoha's hospital.

Ino, wearing an oxygen mask and hooked up to more wires and machines than he's ever seen _anyone_ be connected to lays in the bed. She looks frail—no, _wasted_. Like something has been eating her from the inside out. Her eyes are closed. 

Naruto has taken the chair by her bedside. Tiny Rin has been set on the floor, leaning against the wall, with her doll in her lap. A macabre replication of the scene he'd found her in. Kakashi's stomach clenches.

There's no one else in the room.

"You said Rin was waiting for me?" he says.

Naruto looks at him for a long moment and then turns his gaze back to Ino. "She is."

_Hello, Kakashi_.

It's Ino's power that allows the words to echo in his head. 

The voice is Rin's.

"No," Kakashi says, like that will change anything. "No. _No_."

"This is Rin," Naruto says quite seriously, his eyes never leaving Ino's face. His fingers curl around one of her slender hands.


	14. Refrain

The very worst part is that Tsunade-shishou is a far better actor than Sakura has ever been--even though she's improved over the years, due to careful coaching and training. As they traverse the halls of the administration buildings, Tsunade-shishou smiles as much as she usually does and stops and handles the issues that her shinobi bring to her with a normalcy that's terribly unsettling.

Sakura walks behind her feeling like a forgotten shadow. She knows that's ridiculous. There's no way that Tsunade-shishou has forgotten her and people in the building address her just as often as they do her Hokage, going from how often she has to paste on a smile and concentrate on acting normal.

She doesn't succeed as well as her sensei does but, then, no one would expect her to—not after spilling secrets to the general public. 

Perhaps Tsunade-shishou's presence is the reason that no one asks her about that. 

Perhaps they think it's all planned because she's standing with Tsunade-shishou and smiling now.

Sakura wonders what the gossip mills will make of _that_ possibility. What conclusions will they draw? She wishes she could talk to Ino, who always had been better at predicting the way the wind would fall. She wishes she could hug Kakashi. Sakura wishes that she wasn't so desperately certain that this is a trap and she's walking into it with her eyes wide open.

What does she have an aptitude in that would be applicable to this situation? 

As Tsunade-shishou chats with an elderly kunoichi--who must be deadly indeed to have reached such an age--Sakura bites her lip and resists the urge to fidget more than that.

It's hard, though. She's never been a calm and quiet sort of girl.

It's harder to look at Tsunade-shishou and wonder where her mentor has gone. She looks and acts the same but Sakura has the weirdest feeling that she doesn't know this Tsunade-shishou at all. 

Tsunade-shishou is a strong advocate of medical ethics.

Testing her without her awareness is a violation of said ethics. Sakura keeps her face smooth even though she grimaces internally. Testing her without her awareness is not, however, a violation of _shinobi_ ethics.

That means, she hopes, that this is something to do with being a shinobi. Not a medical issue. Though with everything she knows about Kakashi (she needs to apologize to him so much but if he's infected, will he even understand her apology?) and Ino (whose body cannot hold out much longer if all her symptoms are true), Sakura can't see how this is anything other than a medical issue.

There's the unsettling idea that it's both. Sakura's pretty sure that's the _right_ answer but it's the one she doesn't like at all. In times of emergency, medical ethics are superseded by shinobi ethics.

She knows that.

Tsunade-shishou knows that.

Sakura hopes it's not a time of emergency and is certain it is. She just doesn't know why. 

As Tsunade-shishou says her goodbyes to the other kunoichi, Sakura smiles and follows her. They don't speak to one another, which is the only thing out of the ordinary in their walking the halls. 

If she wanted to, she could break the silence. Sakura knows that, with the depth of Tsunade-shishou's acting, her mentor would respond to bland pleasantries with more of the same. They _could_ carry on a conversation.

Sakura holds her silence.

They wind up in a hallway that Sakura doesn't often have reason to go down. It's the billing and accounting department and the Chuunin who spend their days up to their ears in money and the managing thereof pay no attention to her or Tsunade-shishou.

Frowning slightly at that--they should at least notice the both of them--Sakura follows as Tsunade-shishou-leads them through a maze of cubicles and filing cabinets. She opens one of the cabinets as they pass and pulls out a file, handing it to Sakura.

Sakura takes it silently, peering down at it even as she keeps on following Tsunade-shishou, whose steps never faltered. The only thing in the file is a blank sheet of paper with the name Miyagi Ran in the right-bottom corner. 

Feeling confused all over again--which is becoming a familiar feeling, if not a welcome one--Sakura closes the file and hurries to catch up as Tsunade-shishou opens a door to a stairwell going down.

She doesn't want to go down those steps. But she does, following her mentor down and down and down.

The door behind them closes and Sakura closes her eyes briefly as she hears the lock engage. 

"Where are we?" she asks, her voice hushed in the darkness. 

"In the administrative building," Tsunade-shishou replies. "Though we won't be there for much longer."

That's the opposite of comforting and Sakura makes a face at the back of Tsunade-shishou's head because she would be willing to eat a kunai before believing that Tsunade-shishou wasn't precisely aware of how little her words were a comfort.

"Where are we going?"

"You'll see."

And despite other questions that Sakura dredges up to ask, Tsunade-shishou says nothing else and just continues down the stairs.

Trepidatiously, clutching the nearly empty file to her chest, Sakura follows. She takes small comfort in the fact that Shikamaru and Temari will know whose presence she was last in, if she goes missing. 

Sakura doesn't know what they'd do with the information, but they'd know. The Hokage's orders are absolute and her very disappearance will tell them of the dangers in prying.

It might not stop them, she thinks, but it could.

_Especially if Ino shows up on the surface again._

Ino's always been the better liar than she. Sakura swallows and steels her determination--she doesn't have any choice but to go forward and that's what she's going to do.

Anything else is going to fall out as it falls out. 

"How much further?" she asks as they hit a hallway and continue down it. "Where are we going?"

It would amuse her, how much she sounds like an impatient child, if she wasn't so scared and worried about everything. 

"Not far," Tsunade-shishou says.

It's not much of an answer, but it pleases Sakura that she's received one at all. 

'Not far' is an accurate assessment as, a few minutes later, Tsunade-shishou ushers her into a plain office. The desk is burnished steel and cold to the touch. The chairs are steel as well. Sakura sits in the one in front of the desk as Tsunade-shishou takes the one behind it.

If she pretends really hard, it could almost be like the start of a normal lesson.

She can't pretend that hard.

Sakura sets the file down on the desk. "What's going on?" she asks, taking the effort to make her voice level and demanding instead of the whine that wants to colour it.

This is her sensei! She's supposed to look after her! Not betray her and then lead her in circles!

Sakura tells the childish part of herself to shut up and _die_.

"Miyagi Ran does not exist," Tsunade-shishou says, leaning back in the chair and looking far too comfortable. Sakura is perched on the edge of her chair, uneasy. "Or rather, that is to say, she was never _meant_ to exist."

"What?"

"You are Miyagi Ran," her mentor continues. "And that's dangerous. We tried to contain you but we're going to have to use you instead."

Sakura inches her chair backwards. "I'm Sakura," she says flatly. "Not this Ran person. You know me, Tsunade-shishou."

But if her teacher has lost her mind, Sakura is in far more danger than she'd ever thought.

"I know that," comes the answer.

Sakura's breathing hitches in something like relief.

"The _role_ you play in this scenario is that of Ran, however," Tsunade-shishou says. "That's the problem."

"I didn't even know I was playing a role," Sakura says, frowning harder. "I'm not. I'm just me."

It sounds ridiculous even as she says it but it's the truth.

Tsunade-shishou sighs. "I'm not saying you aren't."

It's only long familiarity with her mentor that allows Sakura say, "You just did, Tsunade-shishou. I'm not Ran. I don't even know who Ran is."

"Ran is an artificial construct," Tsunade-shishou says, her gaze distant. "More accurately, she's a mistake."

"So you're saying that _I'm_ a mistake?" That... hurts. It hurts in ways that Sakura hadn't even expected to be hurt. She's past the stage where the idea of failing someone's expectations will crumple her spirits but it still cuts deep.

"No." Tsunade-shishou's voice is flat. "You're not. I'm very proud of you and I'm making a mess of this. I wish... I wish you hadn't passed."

"What _did_ I pass?" she asks. "And why were you doing experiments on me without my permission? That's not supposed to happen. You're against that sort of thing."

"I am," her mentor says. "But not at the expense of the entire village. I've made the decisions I thought best for the entire village rather than for the individual people. I'm the Hokage, Sakura. No Kage has ever been a _nice_ person. We can't afford to me. Hard decisions are made every day. And that means... in this case, some of the decisions I've made have had very bad consequences for a few people. Even if those people are ones I love."

"But?" Sakura prompts when Tsunade-shishou pauses and looks to be hesitating. 

Tsunade-shishou's smile doesn't touch her eyes. "Despite ongoing complications, I've spared the village as a whole from the worst of it. I think that's the best that any Kage can have said about them."

It leaves her cold to hear something like that out of her mentor's mouth but then, Sakura understands, this isn't her mentor who is speaking to her at the moment: it's the Hokage. 

Sakura knows her history. What Tsunade-shishou says about the Hokage, or any Kage not being good people is fundamentally true. Some of them are very good leaders.

But a good leader is not the same as a good person. It can't be when the needs of many have to be weighed against the needs of few. It can't be when every day the Kages need to send their shinobi out to die and can only hope they'll be good enough to survive and come back so they can be sent out again and again.

(She knows that some people murmur that she could be Hokage, after Tsunade-shishou, but Sakura doesn't want it. The endless cycle of death would destroy her, Sakura thinks.)

"And how will I come out of this?" she asks, her voice hesitant, looking at the folder and knowing all that's in it is a page with Miyagi Ran's name on it. Someone who never existed.

Is she to become that? Someone who never existed?

"That's up to you," Tsunade-shishou says. "We're not done with the tests but, Sakura, being Ran means that the outcome relies on your shoulders. If you can manage it... almost everything will be all right."

Sakura meets her Hokage's eyes. "And if I don't manage it?"

"Then you'll be repeating Ran's mistakes," Tsunade-shishou tells her quietly. "And that's not something we need repeated. Not at all."

"What were her mistakes?"

Tsunade-shishou smiles. It's bitter. "Telling you that would colour the results."

Her stomach swoops uncomfortably. "So I'm flying blind?"

"Yes."

Sakura clenches her hands, resisting the urge to pull out the journal that she and Ino had been writing it, resisting the urge to see if Ino has revealed any more text. 

What should Ino do, if Ino were the one in this situation?

"Kakashi and Ino?" she says. "Will they be all right, if I make the right choices?"

"Hatake Kakashi is likely to recover," Tsunade-shishou says, after a beat of silence. "What will you do?"

It chills her to the bone that Tsunade-shishou doesn't answer her about Ino. Sakura swallows around a lump in her throat, telling herself that fear and worry is useless. Ino will be all right because Ino is always all right.

Even as she tells herself that, Sakura doesn't believe it.

"If I turn away now," Sakura says, "what will happen?"

Tsunade-shishou's face is expressionless, which is so rare that it takes Sakura a moment to realize what she's seeing. "The experiments will progress."

Sakura understands: with or without her consent, this will go on. 

"Does my choice here make a difference?"

"It makes all the difference in the world. There's no substitute for willing participation."

The worst part is that Sakura knows that. She's just not sure she wants to participate.

"If that's the case, why didn't you get my permission before?" she asks, keeping her voice bland with an effort. It would be so, so satisfying to shout and get indignant but here and now she desperately feels the need to appear in control of herself-- even if that's a lie. 

"The first tests need to be done in a vacuum," Tsunade-shishou says. "Too much knowledge colours them and throws off the whole situation. And..." she hesitates a moment and then carries on, "and at the beginning we weren't sure we'd need you. There was another candidate for Ran who had a good chance at being exactly what was needed."

A chill creeps down her spine. "What happened to the other Ran?" Sakura asks. "Who was it?"

Tsunade-shishou ignores the second question. "Ran could have done it," she says. "But an unexpected immunodeficiency made an appearance. She's alive but she can't carry out the rest of the role. Not all the way to the end. She's already transitioned from Ran."

"You _missed_ something?" Sakura asks incredulously. "And what does that mean--transitioned from? What did she transition _to_?"

"I missed something," Tsunade-shishou agrees, her shoulders slumping. "And someone else is paying the cost of that." 

"Who?"

"The rest of it," Tsunade-shishou says, "you can't know. Not and be Ran. Will you become her willingly?"

Sakura bites her lip again. "Can I have a few minutes to think about it?"

She wants to ask for days and weeks to think about it. She doesn't _want_ to think about it because she's not stupid and she can put together Tsunade-shishou's evasions.

But she asks for minutes because she thinks she's likely to get them.

"Of course," Tsunade-shishou says, getting up. "Ten minutes. I'll be in the hall. Just open the door when you've come to a decision."

Then she's gone and Sakura is left alone.

She knows who Ran is--no, she corrects, _was_. It's there in what Tsunade-shishou deliberately hadn't said. 

Sakura pulls her legs up onto the chair with her, so she can rest her chin on them and closes her eyes. She takes a deep breath and then another, and fights the urge to cry.

It would be so easy to give into the urge. It would use up her ten minutes.

Even with that in mind, she stays balled up on the chair as the minutes tick past, her mind working furiously. Somewhere past the five minute mark--she's keeping count--Sakura pulls out the journal and flips it open.

Ino _has_ left another note.

 _It's important to believe,_ Ino has written. _Even when it's gone badly or there's no way out, it's important to believe that what you're doing matters. I don't have time for regret, Sakura. Do you?_

Sakura chews on the cap of her pen, reading Ino's words again and getting more out of them each time. Things like 'don't pity me' and 'I'm not sorry' are in the text, she thinks, for all that Ino didn't write them down.

And since Ino has done this, how can she do any less? But she's a different person than Ino.

 _I regret things constantly,_ Sakura writes. _That doesn't stop me from moving forward. I_ want _to believe._

She puts the journal away and slips off the chair. Tsunade-shishou is in the hallway, just like she'd said she would be.

"What do I have to do?" she asks. "What's the next test?"

Tsunade-shishou's smile, of mingled pride and grief, makes her heart ache fiercely. She's so scared.

"Let's go to it," Tsunade-shishou says. 

The next test turns out to be a blood test. Not one of the ones that she knows how to give, which is impressive because Sakura had thought she'd known all the ways of testing blood. Back in the little room, the very plain office, the sheet of paper with Miyagi Ran written on it is taken from the folder and set down on top of it.

Then Sakura, using a kunai, at Tsunade-shishou's direction, scores shallow wounds in thin lines over her hand. One line for each finger and the thumb and then three length-wise down the palm. Her hand stings fiercely but Sakura knows that it barely counts as an injury.

On the field, she'd still be able to do jutsu just fine and this will take all of a second to heal. She watches as blood wells up.

"Press your hand flat to the paper," Tsunade-shishou says. "Then hold it there for thirty seconds before moving your hand."

Sakura does so. It sends a chill through her.

It's not painful, though the chill treads the fine line between uncomfortable and hurtful as Sakura counts down the seconds before lifting her hand.

"Can I heal myself?" she asks. "Or do you need more blood?"

"Heal yourself," Tsunade-shishou says.

Sakura does so and then looks at the paper. It's blank. It's _eerie_ , Sakura thinks, when it should have her blood all over it. 

"Absorption paper?"

Tsunade-shishou nods and Sakura bites her lip. Absorption paper is usually used for storing things. She supposes it would make sense to use to store her blood, though it won't keep it fresh, since none of the seals have been applied. 

But the way that Tsunade-shishou stares at it, like she's waiting for something, makes Sakura believe that just because she can't see anything different about the paper doesn't mean there isn't.

Which, come to think of it, is a summation of how shinobi are meant to live.

"What's going to happen now?" she asks, when the waiting gets to her. Normally she's able to fake being patient a bit more. 

Not right now. Not when everything is so off-kilter.

"It's calibrating your blood," Tsunade-shishou said, not lifting her eyes from the paper.

"Calibrating?" Sakura echoes.

The paper turns a deep blue as the word 'CONFIRMED' oozes out of it in blood red letters.

"It makes sure you're a compatible Ran before anything else happens," Tsunade-shishou says. Then, before Sakura can question that, she says, "Brace yourself."

She does, automatically, because it's Tsunade-shishou and despite all she's learned in the last few hours, it doesn't make a difference to the fact that she's spent more time obeying Tsunade-shishou than anyone else, except for her parents. 

But even with the warning the pain that strikes her nearly overwhelms her. Sakura doubles over, gasping, as she digs her blunt nails into the palms of her hand, trying to give herself something to focus on that's not the pain that rampages through her head like a squadron of enemy nin. Her knees buckle and she hits the floor.

The floor is cold and the shock of it displaces the pain for a second. 

That second is precious and Sakura seizes it, turning her chakra in on herself, starting a scan that, even as the pain sends her ability to think and focus down the drain once more, will find out what's going on. What's being changed in her body.

She'll have to check the scan later--but later is her only choice as she writhes on the floor, her jaw clenched so hard to keep from screaming that the thought, discombulated from the rest of her thoughts, drifts past and wonders if she's going to break her jaw.

It doesn't matter: she can fix that.

When Sakura blacks out, she's not grateful for it.

* * *

Sakura wakes up, stiff and cold and on the floor. Carefully, she cracks one eye open, feeling the fire in her throat--she must have given in and started screaming, though she doesn't remember when--and catalogues her pains. Nothing's broken, not even her jaw, though she aches like someone has been pounding her with mallets. Sitting up slowly, Sakura realizes that she's alone.

Tsunade-shishou has left.

Glaring at the door, Sakura begins the process of stretching. She does so carefully, forcing herself not to hurry, as she works out the stiffness and pulses healing chakra through her body to take care of the soreness.

Normally she wouldn't do that. Normally she would just stretch and let the soreness work itself out--being sore is a good thing, when it comes to training. But this isn't training and even though she's agreed to this, she barely understands what's going on.

It's better to be prepared, as much as she's able with. 

Getting to her feet is more of an effort than it should be and her body is wobbly and off-balance, like she's been sick for a long time. Staggering over to the door she tries to open it.

It's locked.

Sakura stares at it, willing it to open, for a long moment before spinning and making her way over to the desk. Because she's angry, she takes Tsunade-shishou's seat instead of her own. It's a petty sort of revenge, one that Tsunade-shishou isn't likely to even know about, but it makes her feel a little bit better and that's good enough for her right here and now.

Turning a narrow-eyed gaze on the door, Sakura takes a deep breath and reaches inside for her chakra. Then she spools it out around her, looking to see if anyone is around. For fifteen minutes she searches, getting a better idea of the layout and finding a number of chakra-blocked rooms. No one is around. It's possible that there's people in the blocked rooms but, after a moment's contemplation, she decides to take that risk.

If nothing else, she'll hear the door to her prison being unlocked.

That decided, Sakura settles herself more comfortably in the chair--which isn't very comfortable for all that spite makes her think it's better than her chair--and closes her eyes, calling up the scan that's been running under her skin.

She wonders what Tsunade-shishou would say about that. Did she know what Sakura had running? Or had she not noticed it? Sakura thinks back and knows that Tsunade-shishou had started out on the other side of the desk but what happened after she'd lost consciousness... Sakura has no idea.

Her scan unfolds behind her eyes, letting her read it, though Sakura gets her first unpleasant shock at the very beginning.

Duration of scan: 17 hours.

Sakura swallows, wondering why her throat isn't sore from thirst, why she's not hungry, why she doesn't have to go to the bathroom. All of those things should be in effect after seventeen hours.

But they're not.

She trusts her scans results though and, despite giving the duration time another side-eye, continues to inspect the results.

What she finds leaves her cold.

Sakura knows her body and knows the range of numbers this sort of scan returns when asked about her. _All_ of the numbers are wrong. If someone had shown her the results, she would have believed they belonged to another person.

To comfort herself, Sakura pulls a strand of pink hair out in front of her face just so she can confirm that hasn't changed. (It hasn't.) Her hands look the same and her clothing fits the way it always did.

And her scan keeps giving her the readouts for another person.

Forcing herself to keep breathing calmly--panic will help no one and won't even make her feel better--Sakura searches her bag, which was left with her, and she wonders why.

There's no new writing from Ino. Sakura feels abandoned for a few seconds, then carefully boxes that feeling away. Even if it's true, there's nothing to be had by dwelling.

Dwelling on things is for times when it's safe to do so.

There's nothing explicitly dangerous in here with her. Just herself, the desk, the chairs, and the locked door that doesn't even have a window. Careful inspection of the walls tells her that there's no spy-holes and not even sprinklers installed in the ceiling. 

_You're Miyagi Ran,_ Tsunade-shishou had said.

Sakura had insisted she wasn't.

Looking at the results of her self-tests, she begins to believe that while she hadn't been _then_ , that she is _now_.


	15. Chant

_This is Rin._

Kakashi looks and looks and sees Ino--not Rin. The tiny, dead Rin, who hadn't even been real looks more like Rin than Ino does. It's not just colouring, it's the shape of the face, the width of the shoulders, the way her eyebrows curve.

But it's Rin's voice that says, _It's me, Kakashi._

And Ino has never heard Rin's voice, unless she's stolen it right out of his mind, but Ino doesn't look well enough to open her eyes, let alone do that. 

Naruto waits for him to respond, as patiently as Ino-not-Rin does.

Kakashi has been kidnapped, experimented on, and led around like a rabbit in a maze. He is currently wearing nothing but a mask, his hitae-ite, and a hospital gown that is uncomfortably drafty because there's never been a hospital gown in existence that wasn't drafty. 

He is tired and lost and confused.

The rage murmurs behind the walls it's been pressed back with and Kakashi throttles it down. He doesn't want it taking him over, even though he doesn't understand what the rage is even _for_.

That leaves him only one response.

He bursts out laughing. It's horrible, ragged laughter that's just to the side of tears, though he refuses to cry.

Kakashi stands there and laughs.

Naruto twists around, still holding Ino's hand, and perches on the side of her bed. He does so carefully, so as not to disturb the many, many machines and wires she's hooked up to. It's his blue-eyed gaze, unsettlingly calm, unusually gentle, that eventually kills Kakashi's laughter. Ino (and Rin) don't react at all.

"It's true, Kakashi-sensei," Naruto says, as Kakashi stops laughing. "I know it's hard to believe. Especially with your memories messed up."

How many of his memories are still missing? How can it be true? Kakashi wonders. That and the words 'I don't believe you' hover on his lips. 

They die before he can say them when Ino opens her eyes.

He has never liked Ino. As a child she had been everything he'd disliked about children--silly, air-headed, full of gossip and laughter and pointless arguments.

As a woman, he'd learned that most of what he'd hated about her as a child had been, if not a lie, had become one. Ino was neither silly nor air-headed and most of her pointless arguments she orchestrated for reasons he could not understand.

In hating her, though, he'd seen her eyes in almost every emotion. Filled with cheer, when she talked to Sakura or sultry when she flirted with the desk Chuunin, dark with solemnity at funerals and bright at festivals.

Narrow and cold with distaste and livid with rage--he's had that directed at himself.

Because of her association to Sakura, he has never been able to ignore her. She has always been relentlessly in his life, a constant irritant that he had to put up with because Sakura loves her. (And that is the one good thing he can find to say about Ino: she loves Sakura just as deeply as Sakura loves her.)

But through it all, her eyes had been a flawless blue--clear as a summer's sky and as disconcerting as a hurricane due to her lack of pupils.

He knows her eyes.

The eyes that look at him out of Ino's face aren't her own.

They are Rin's.

(Because he knows Ino's eyes but he knows Rin's _better_.)

She doesn't speak, but she doesn't need to. There's affection in the gaze and warmth--neither that have ever been in Ino's eyes, not when she's looked at him. (And truthfully, had she looked at him that way, Kakashi would have been deeply uncomfortable.)

It's Rin's expression in Ino's face. 

_It could be a trap!_ his mind babbles, trying desperately to warn him, to keep him from believing, to stop him from doing anything stupid. _It has to be a trap! She got the information out of your head!_

 _Kakashi,_ Rin says, _it is so good to see you again._

"You can't be real," Kakashi says, knowing even as he speaks that it means part of him believes this is real.

If he didn't partly believe, he wouldn't have to insist it wasn't true. Kakashi hates himself a little for that.

 _I am real,_ Rin says softly. _You're not imagining things or hallucinating._

"You're dead."

Naruto makes a sound, like a protest, but when Kakashi looks at him, Naruto looks away and says nothing, his jaw set stubbornly.

 _I am,_ Rin says agreeably, _and I'm not. Not everything is black and white._

"I know that," Kakashi says. "But, you--Rin, I _saw_ you die."

He'd stood by her bedside, holding her hand, as chakra poisoning had killed her by inches. Kakashi would _never_ forget the days and nights he'd spent standing there, trying to comfort her when he'd desperately needed comfort himself and there had been no one left he'd trusted to give it to him.

 _I'm still dead. Your memories aren't wrong._ Rin is silent for a few moments while Kakashi tries to formulate a response, any response, to that.

He can't. This isn't real, can't be real.

(It is real.)

 _Ino-chan is channelling me,_ Rin says eventually. _You could say that I'm possessing her, though that is not quite accurate since she invited me in._

"I don't understand why you would want this," Kakashi says. "You're dead. You've been dead for years. Why now?"

Rin looks at him. _There is still something I need to do. I made a mistake and it needs to be fixed._

Kakashi swallows, his throat dry. "Rin," he says hoarsely, "what mistake did you make that you'd have to come back from the dead to fix? What was so bad that you couldn't rest?"

He doesn't think, doesn't want, to really believe that this is Rin.

But he's beginning to, which scares him.

If Rin is here, where is Minato-sensei who would surely be furious at how Kakashi has not looked after his son? Where is Obito, who would never be left behind, even if he showed up a bit late?

Where is his father?

Rin doesn't answer him and, after a moment, Kakashi takes a step forward. "Rin," he says, "please."

It's not fair. If this were anyone else, anyone at all, he could keep believing that it was a trap. That this was some cruel joke.

But not Rin.

Which, the part of his mind that's not desperately torn between longing and anxiety, the part of him that is still analytically observing, just means it's more likely that she's not who she says she is. That she's a danger.

But it's Rin.

And the only danger, here and now, that Kakashi can see is to himself. He's always been better at defending other people than he has been at looking out for his own best interests.

He can't even push people away properly, not the way he wants to. Somehow they keep worming their way in under his defenses. No one knows how to stay away from him and even while he wishes they would, he's pleased by their friendship.

"I can help," Kakashi says, in the face of Rin's continued silence. It eats at him. _This is a trap, this is a trap, this is a trap--_

 _You already are,_ Rin says sorrowfully. _It's already started, with the rage. It was easier to induce this time around._

Kakashi's eyes narrow slightly despite the way his heart feels lighter at the very idea of helping her. (He's an idiot, he thinks. Or is that being manipulated too?) "This time around?"

 _The last time went poorly,_ Rin tells him. _My host died and Obito got in the way. After that, Sarutobi-sama refused to try again despite knowing that it would force the next Hokage to fix his mistakes._ Ino's head tilts to the side, just slightly, Rin's eyes large in her face. _And mine,_ she adds. _I am glad Minato-sensei never had to try. I think it would have broken his heart._

Kakashi feels like he can't breathe. "Your host died?" he asks. There's other questions to ask but that's the first one that springs to his lips when she stops talking. He understands what she's saying but it means… it means… so many things he's thought he'd known are wrong.

 _The Rin you know,_ she says, _was not the original Rin._

His hands clench—it's a way to keep his voice steady as Rin's voice yanks another stone in his foundation away from him—and swallows hard before he can ask the next question, the obvious one, the one that all three of them (four of them?) knows comes next.

"What do you mean?" he asks. "You were there, Rin. You were part of my team. That's not all a lie."

 _No,_ she says. _It's not. But it's not the truth either. I was Rin and the girl who had given me her body was also named Rin, which made things simpler. She let me in and we worked together until her body fell apart._

"That's not the truth."

His voice is flat, not pleading, mostly because he can't bring himself to plead. The urge to laugh and laugh and laugh is coming back and he can feel the first creeping tendrils of rage bubble in the back of his mind.

He can recognize the rage as not his own though, which he couldn't do before. It would bother him more but there's so much to be bothered by that it falls to the wayside. "It can't be the truth," he says. "It doesn't even make sense. If you'd taken another girl to be your host, back then, she would have had to be very young. Yamanaka's not that young! She's almost the age you were when you _died_."

And he realizes, even as he speaks that Ino is dreadfully, dreadfully close to looking like death herself. How sick must she be to look like that? Is she even in there, somewhere, right now?

 _Rin let me take over,_ Rin says. _She was dying. My possession gave her years more of life and spared her parents the sorrow of burying their only daughter before she was four. They gave Sarutobi-san permission for the procedure._

"No," Kakashi says, shaking his head. "No. I refuse to accept that. Rin, you're sick or I'm sick, or we're both sick and this is all in our minds but—no, Rin, that's not how it was."

Rin's eyes are very gentle and he thinks she's about to answer when alarms go off, the machines that Rin (that Ino) are hooked up to shrilling wildly as Rin's brown eyes dim and go out, leaving Ino's blue clear for him to see before they slide shut as she coughs desperately, hacking and wheezing, her body seizing up.

Naruto, showing more proficiency than Kakashi would ever have guessed helps her sit up and his hands glow with the unmistakable green of medical jutsu. Kakashi can't tell what the jutsu is for but it helps ease Ino's coughing, which is done in her own voice.

He, feeling worn, crosses the room and sits next to the dead Rin left against the wall like an abandoned doll. Vaguely he supposes that he should help… but Naruto seems like he has it well in hand and Kakashi just… just feels numb.

He needs time to think.

He tries to scrounge up the feeling to care more for Ino but can't. He's never liked her. The only reason he even tries is because of Sakura and, now, Rin. Ino is Sakura's best friend and she's something to Rin, even if he doesn't follow exactly what wand how and doesn't really want to because it makes his heart ache. 

It's probably that reason that means even though he tries, it's halfhearted, at best, and he doesn't really care. He listens to her struggle to breathe and just feels tired. 

Kakashi side-eyes the tiny Rin and with a glance at Naruto, who is thoroughly occupied with Ino, he gently pokes the Rin in the shoulder. 

She feels real. 

She slumps to the side and he feels bad for that--worse than he feels over Ino, truth be told, which would make him feel like a horrible person if he gave a damn--and Kakashi reaches over to straighten her up. It's bad enough that she's been left over here, he reasons, but to leave her on her side like she doesn't matter... 

Kakashi is aware it's irrational, even as he leans the Rin against his shoulder, and tells himself that this way, at least, it will just look like she's sleeping. She's gone and she wasn't even the Rin he knew. 

Those facts don't make a whole lot of difference to his feelings. 

The floor is surprisingly warm to against his skin and he finds that comforting, sitting there, with the body of a ghost who isn't quite as dead, or quite what he's believed she was, and watches silently as Naruto deals with Ino. 

Naruto's medical expertise is interesting. He wouldn't have believed it if he wasn't seeing it. Kakashi doesn't feel bad for that thought--Sakura wouldn't believe it either. 

Thinking of Sakura makes him think he should care more because she would and she'd be upset that he was just sitting here but he... can't. Kakashi slumps back against the wall and closes his eyes. The wall is cool, though the floor is warm, and he wonders at the contrast before dismissing it as unimportant. 

He needs time to think and he doesn't want to think and that's just him going around in circles and the worst part is that he knows that and doesn't feel up to trying to break the cycle. Kakashi cracks one eye open, feeling the tell-tale surge of chakra that precedes a jutsu and just nods when several Narutos appear. Kage Bunshin no Jutsu. 

Now he _really doesn't_ need to do anything. There's more than enough Naruto's to take care of Ino. 

(That's just an excuse.)

It doesn't change the way he feels vaguely guilty about just sitting here. 

Tiny Rin shifts and he gently pats her shoulder. Then he freezes because tiny Rin has turned her head and she's dead and that can't happen. 

"Rin?" he asks. 

Rin doesn't answer him but begins moving very slowly, stretching out her fingers and then her wrists and elbows, stretching carefully. Kakashi watches, wondering if he should be alarmed, and instead marvels at the fact that he's, well, pleased. Relieved. 

(Has the other Rin, the one that led him to this one, woken up again? He hopes so. He hopes so more than he should truthfully.) 

When Rin stands, still wobbly, Kakashi reaches out to steady her by the elbow. She turns and smiles at him. 

He smiles back. It's all unbidden, unrehearsed and he knows it's dangerous. She shouldn't be able to do this, he shouldn't be so happy that she can, and it's all gone to hell. 

Rin takes his hand and tugs on it gently but insistently. Kakashi rises to his feet. "Where do you want me to go?" he asks, knowing she can't or won't answer. 

She just looks at him and then at the door. 

"I got that much," he says softly, glancing at the Narutos and at Ino and the shrilling alarms that have faded into the background by now. For him, at least. "Is it okay? I don't think... I don't think the closer copy was finished talking to me." 

Rin tugs at his hand again and Kakashi goes with her. 

It probably says something about him that he's much happier following a dead girl's younger self than he is watching Sakura's best friend struggle for her life. A distant part of him thinks that, in other circumstances, he'd care more about Ino. He should, he knows that, but the knowledge feels distant and untouchable and he doesn't care enough to try and reach it.

He doesn't look back as he follows Rin out of the two rooms and then down a different hallway than he had come from. "Where are we going now?" he asks her.

Rin squeezes his hand and says nothing.

"I wish you could talk," he says idly. "Don't get me wrong, I'm glad you're here, but your older self was easier to get information out of."

Her shoulders shake and he suspects that she's laughing, in her own way.

Kakashi knows he shouldn't feel at ease but he does. It's almost like someone's turned time back because he's got Rin and she's laughing.

The world is all wrong, he knows that, and he knows his pleasure comes from a false source.

But it's so nice.

Rin leads him through more doors and down more halls until they're back in the blindingly white hallways, the blue and cream left far behind. They walk leisurely and Kakashi makes Rin's shoulders shake with silent laughter three more times.

It's a good time. It feels like a safe time.

It's all a lie and Kakashi knows he's going to be loath to give it up. Maybe he can find a way to keep Rin? Not as a pet, he thinks, but maybe as a daughter? He looks down at the top of Rin's head and tries to imagine how Sakura would take that.

He doesn't know. He doesn't think that she'd leave her here but... anything else is uncertain.

And it's ridiculous anyway because this has to be a trap. It must be.

Every time he tells himself that, though, it becomes a little less convincing and he's aware of that too.

(It should trouble him more than it does. Alarm stirs like a sluggish serpent in the back of his mind.)

"How much further are we going?" Kakashi asks, his voice breaking through the soothing silence that has enveloped the walk. The only sounds are their footfalls. His silent and hers a little clattery as she walks in sandals that have to be of civilian make because they make too much noise for any shinobi brand of footwear.

Rin tilts her head up and then let's go of his hand, takes two steps forward, so that she's in front of him and lifts her arms up.

Kakashi smiles despite himself and picks her up. She settles her arms around her neck and rests her head on his shoulder. 

"None of that's an answer," he tells her, turning when she points for him to do so and continuing down another hallway. His admonishment is weak and soft even to his own ears. 

He finds it hard to care.

There's so much right with all the wrongness that he knows his judgement is flawed, that he's probably walking even further into a trap, and it still doesn't change anything for him.

He's happy.

Kakashi is slow to realize that and once he does, he's left speechless, mechanically following Rin's pointed directions as he dwells on the wonder of being happy. It's been a long time since he has been. There's been good moods and good days and even good weeks. Being with Sakura has been good for him, he's been content and his demons had been quieter than they'd been in years.

But right now he's happy, in a way that he rarely remembers having been, even back when he'd been a child.

The depth of it is a little frightening, a little disorienting, and Kakashi stumbles on a step, which is unlike him enough that even tiny Rin turns her face up to his as he catches his balance, her eyes wide and concerned.

Ridiculously, that sends another surge of good feeling reeling through him. "It's all right," he tells her. "Even I'm clumsy sometimes."

She looks unimpressed and unconvinced but smiles and presses a kiss to his cheek as he continues down the stairs, carrying her in his arms. 

He looks around, realizing for the first time that they've left the white halls again and are in a place that's slate grey and dreary. He doesn't feel dreary, which makes him more inclined to dismiss his impression of the place as pure nonsense.

(He knows that's wrong but can't bring himself to care. He should care.)

Rin stops him outside of a heavy door, the only one in the hall. It has no window and no doorknob.

"Through here?" he asks. It reminds him, vaguely, of the doors that the final bosses hide behind in Naruto's video games. 

Rin nods and wriggles until he sets her down. Kakashi feels a little colder in doing so until she takes his hand and smiles at him.

He takes a breath, he's being ridiculous, and presses his hand to the panel that he can't see but knows must be there. The door grows warm under his hands and then there's the sharp bite of many needles sinking into his skin. Kakashi swallows several swearwords out of deference to Rin's presence.

"Is it supposed to do that?" he asks, trying to pull his hand away but finding himself unable to move it. 

Rin nods and wraps her arms around his leg.

Despite himself, Kakashi feels better. 

It seems like an eternity, though it's probably only minutes, before the needles retract and the door opens.

Kakashi shakes his hand out, wincing as he does, and makes no move to enter that room. "I find it worrisome," he tells tiny Rin, "that this door needed blood to open." His hand stings but doesn't seem to be deeply injured. It's not enough to slow him down in a fight but it's a nuisance where he didn't need one.

Rin, being herself, says nothing. 

Kakashi nods and takes a step and then another step into the room. It's dark but with each step he takes, a little more of it lights up. He finds that disturbing too. He's maybe ten paces in when he realizes that tiny Rin hasn't followed him. He turns to look for her and sees her standing, haloed in the light from the hallway. She regards him with huge, solemn eyes and raises her hand in a wave.

The door shuts with a click even as he lunges for it. Kakashi searches for a panel--there's nothing--and when that doesn't work, slowly turns to study the room. It's still dim. Whatever lighting there is, it's only turned on where he's been. His skin prickles. He doesn't like this. 

He has no one to blame but himself. He'd known that tiny Rin had to be leading him to trap and he hadn't cared. Thinking about it now, Kakashi finds he cares a lot more. There's got to be an exit, Kakashi thinks, ignoring the cold slime of worry that wonders if the locked door he's beside was the only exit. Taking a deep breath, he shakes out his hands to make sure they're jutsu ready, since jutsu are going to have to be his main weapon until he finds something better, and begins sidling along the wall. 

Better to get an outline of the room, Kakashi thinks, before seeing what's in the middle. He keeps his senses extended, just in case there's a chakra signature anywhere, but he can't feel anything, not even Ino and Naruto's signatures, which he _should_ be able to feel. This place has more chakra dampening jutsu embedded in the walls than any other place he's ever seen. The lab must be the work of generations.

Kakashi doesn't find that comforting. 

The room turns out to be large and more rectangular than square. There's only one door. There are no cabinets or counters along the walls and the entire way around he'd been unhindered and hadn't had to go around anything. The floor is cool tile. 

The light only makes the remaining dusk of the room even more discomfiting.

But that's probably because of the bodies.

In the shadowy twilight of the room, Kakashi can see four tables, much like the one he'd woken up on. One of them is empty. Three of them... aren't. He remains vigilant at the door for minutes, watching like a hawk, until he's absolutely certain that none of them are breathing. They aren't. They don't even twitch an eyelash under his careful scrutiny. 

Which isn't comforting either. Why would tiny Rin have led him to a room with nothing but corpses and no way out… there's got to be something he's missing, but what? Kakashi hates this. Hates it.

Hates that he can't bring himself to hate Rin. He just hates himself for having gone along with it so easily.

Carefully, he approaches the nearest body. There's a thin sheet covering him--he can tell it's a male--from the waist down, which Kakashi finds vaguely amusing. Who cares about modesty once they're dead? Closer, he can see that the corpse looks like none he's ever seen. (And, in his lifetime, he's seen a lot of corpses.) 

The skin is waxen and pale but it's not the pallor of death. Kakashi doesn't touch the body, keeps a foot of distance between the table and himself, just in case. If it tries to grab him, he's far enough away to be able to react. He doesn't like this. Not at all. There's something about the colour that niggles at his memories. He frowns sharply and studies the man a little harder. He knows that haircut, he realizes, and that face, he knows that too. He hadn't recognized it at first because of the circumstances but he does.

Thinking he's got a handle on some of this situation, Kakashi moves onto the next body. He knows this one too and the next.

Kakashi leans against the door he can't open and fights the shivery, shuddery feelings wracking through his body. He knows these bodies. They'd gone on a mission with him. He thinks it was the last mission he'd done. Something about a swamp and an experiment and being late, which isn't anything unusual, except that it had been...

He takes a long, deep swallow, which doesn't help his nerves and refuses to look at the empty bed. He's not laying there, not even if that's what he's supposed to do. 

(He strongly suspects that's what he's supposed to do.)

He'd rather die.

Looking at the bodies of his teammates, Kakashi thinks that might be more likely than he wants it to be—they've begun to move. Mouths gaping, breaths rasping, expressions mindless, they're slowly sitting up.


	16. Stretto

Naruto hates that Ino is sick. 

Ino knows that, in the same way she knows most things these days: she gets it straight out of his mind. It's harder to keep from reading other people when she's hopped up on a multitude of drugs just to keep her alive a little longer. 

_It's all right,_ she thinks at Naruto, who is washing his hands, now that she's stopped coughing and can breathe again.

"Of course it is," he agrees, with the cheerfulness in his voice and sorrow in his thoughts. It's a dissonance that she's become used to. "You're going to be fine."

They both know it's a lie but it's a lie that Ino lets him have. There'd been a time when, between friends, she'd ripped into any lie in order to force people to be truthful. Older and wiser and sadder, she knows that sometimes a lie between friends is something helpful.

 _Do you know where Hatake went?_ she asks, rather than say anything about the way Naruto's hands tremble slightly as he wraps his warm fingers around her cold ones. She squeezes his hand lightly, not being able to manage more than that.

"Rin's leading him," Naruto says, his eyes going distant, searching for the chakra signature. "He's heading for the containment room. You good with that?"

 _It fits the plan well enough._ Beyond that, Ino doesn't care. She doesn't have the energy to waste in feeling sorry for a man she's never liked. _And Sakura?_

"She should be waking up soon," Naruto said quietly. "What she does next will be her move." He hesitates, eyes troubled. "Are you sure that she had to...?"

 _Yes,_ Ino says. _Even if I live,_ which she still doesn't believe will happen, _I'm no good for the role I was supposed to play. I can't sustain Rin and I can't undo Ran's choice. Sakura's going to have to do that._

"You think she can?"

Ino can feel Naruto ruthlessly crushing all of his other questions, the sadder, harder ones. The ones about her survival, about how Sakura is going to do all of this when Ino is still around, still in the equation, when the equation was never meant for the two of them to be there. 

_I think Sakura can do anything she wants to do,_ Ino says honestly. _I always have. She's just got to have confidence in herself._

She's never doubted that. Ever. Not even in the bad years when Sakura hadn't talked to her, hadn't wanted anything to do with her, and yet had always, always had time to argue with her.

Naruto sighs, feeding chakra through his hands into her depleted pathways. "I'll have confidence in you then," he says. "Sakura-chan's great. But this is... she doesn't know what's going on."

 _She knows more than she did._ Ino tries to smile at him. It doesn't really work. _And when she wakes up, she'll have a way to find out more. She just doesn't know about it yet. You'll see. She won't be in the dark forever._

"I know about the journal," Naruto murmurs. "I'm still not sure that was a good idea, Ino."

_It was my choice._

"Not arguing that," he said, leaning against her bed. "Not even going to argue about not telling the old lady. But Ino, are you sure it was a good idea?"

 _Yes._ Ino is definitely sure. _Sakura is amazing, Naruto, but she tends to falter without encouragement. There's no one left right now to give that to her. Especially not now that she's in the Miyagi Labs. I don't think she'd tell her parents, she doesn't trust Shikamaru and Temari-san, and she knows Shizune-sensei and Hokage-sama are compromised._ Ino studied Naruto's hands. They were nice hands. They gave her time to think. _She might talk to you but, again, being in the lab makes that impossible without her knowing that something is extremely wrong with your participation._

"It's not wrong," Naruto says, though he looks shadowed. "I mean, yeah, okay, it sucks ass. But it's not wrong. I know what the old lady and you are doing. I don't follow all the science talk but I get the goals and I can agree with them, even while I don't like them--which I don't. But Sakura-chan..." he sighs. "I guess I still just want to protect her."

 _You don't need to._

"I know that," he says, laughing though there's nothing particularly funny about it. "But, man, she's still one of the most important people in my life. I'm not crushing on her any more but she's still my teammate, my family. I don't have much of that."

 _I know,_ Ino says gently. _But Sakura will be absolutely okay. Everything is going to be absolutely fine._

The shadows in his eyes grow. "For her, I hope so," Naruto says. "For me, yeah, Kyuubi fights off anything contagious no problem. Kakashi-sensei's chances are pretty iffy though and yours..." He trails off.

 _It's going to be okay,_ Ino tells him again. _Even if that happens._

"It won't be okay," he disagrees. "You'll be gone. I am not okay with that part of the plan."

Ino laughs, her mind's voice a soft snickering echo and nothing more. _It wasn't part of the plan,_ she says. _It's just how it's turning out._

He looks anxious. "But you're not going to give up, right?"

 _Never._ That much is true. _I never give up._

Also true.

But Ino has been here, losing ground by inches for months, and she knows that with every day that passes that there's a greater chance that this is going to be a fight that she's not going to be able to win.

Naruto is studying her carefully, though, and she keeps her doubts from showing on her face. It's something that will help him. He takes a deep breath and lets it out. "Want to go outside?" he offers, instead. "We should probably deal with Shikamaru and Temari."

 _I still want to know what sort of pull Temari-san has with the ANBU,_ Ino muses thoughtfully. _I wouldn't mind, if you've got the energy._

"You know me," Naruto says. "I might not have brains but I never, ever run out of energy."

 _Don't insult yourself,_ Ino chides him. _Want me to clear the excursion with Hokage-sama?_

Naruto hesitates. She knows he wants to say to hell with that and that they can apologize after the fact but maturity wins out. "Yeah," he says, "check with her."

* * *

Ino likes the feel of fresh air against her skin. She knows that in the lab, the real her, the original her, is there, holding Naruto's hand. She grins over at the Naruto beside her, both of them shadow clones, and stretches. It doesn't matter. These days, being a clone, carefully alterated to look like she's 'supposed' to look, feels like freedom. "Where to first?"

Naruto laughs. "I don't think we're going to get a chance to decide that," he says. "Shikamaru, incoming. It'll take him maybe a minute to get here. He's probably been searching for your chakra signature."

She takes a seat on the rooftop, letting her feet dangle off the edge, and plays with the ends of her twin braids. Naruto sits down next to her, with a sigh that sounds a lot like contentment. He leans back, resting on his elbows. 

He looks good, Ino thinks, a bit ruefully. She tucks that thought away before it goes beyond just one thought and ignores that she's been having to do that more and more lately. It doesn't matter anyway, not now.

"Anything you want to tell him?" she asks.

Naruto just shakes his head. "Your party," Naruto tells her. "I'll follow your lead."

"As you should," she laughs, shoving his shoulder lightly. "I'm your better."

"Keep believing that," he tells her. "And five… four… three… two… one."

His shadow reaches her first. Ino doesn't move as his shadow curls around her ankles and just leans over to look down to the street. Shikamaru looks up at her, Temari by his side. "Coming up?" Ino asks, wriggling one foot as much as she can just to be a brat. Beside her, Naruto muffles a laugh.

Shikamaru doesn't laugh and he's still not laughing, not even smiling, when he's on the roof a moment later. The shadow remains around her ankles and Ino thinks it would bother her a lot more if she couldn't just... disappear, if it came to that. He settles down next to her and Ino wonders what they'd have done if Chouji was here too. Naruto wouldn't want to move but her team would have priority for sitting on either side of her.

It doesn't matter. 

(Except that it does, if just to her feelings.)

"Hey," she says, nudging Shikamaru gently. "You look like a storm cloud."

Temari slowly takes a seat on Shikamaru's other side, a bit awkward, like she's not sure if she belongs in this scenario. Ino is pretty sure that she doesn't and even while Shikamaru studies her with sleepy-eyed intensity, Ino reaches her mind out to see what she can find out. Tsunade-sama is keeping things from her and Ino gets that, she does, but it doesn't change the fact that Ino likes to know.

And her control over reading peoples' minds is faulty enough these days that if she picks something up, she can just blame it on that. 

"You're a shadow clone," Shikamaru says finally. "Where's the real Ino?"

"Technically," Ino says, "a shadow clone is the real person. Anything I learn, I'll know." Temari's mind is curiously blank and Ino probes at it carefully ghosting her mind against the shield (and it _is_ a shield, she realizes, a few seconds later).

He gives her an extremely flat look even as she feels his mind ticking through a number of responses. She wishes he'd use the first one that springs to mind rather than going way down the list to pick one that's gentler. "You're sick," he says, "I want to see you, not your clone. Please, Ino."

"For security reasons, I can't do that," Ino says, sighing. "And stop coddling me. It's irritating."

Irritation crosses _his_ face when he realizes what that has to mean--that she's getting his thoughts. Ino would feel worse about it, since she doesn't actually like prying in her friend's heads, especially when she's loved Shikamaru for years and years and he's been in love with someone else. It's _uncomfortable_ to hear that sort of thing. 

Especially, she realizes, now that Sakura's told him of her feelings.

Ino sighs and leans against Naruto, rather than leaning against Shikamaru like she might have done a week ago. Shikamaru's lips flatten. "Get out of my mind," he says. "We've never done powers against each other except in training."

She kicks her feet out pointedly, as they're still tangled with shadow. "I can't fully stay out of your mind," Ino admits. "My control is pretty awful right now." It's both true and a good excuse. It doesn't make it any more fun to have to say it though. She's always been proud of her control. 

Temari shifts uncomfortably but Ino doesn't outwardly give any sign of having noticed. Ino's mind continues to look for weak points in the shield even as she verifies that it's not her family's work. She'd recognize their signature anywhere.

 _Interesting,_ Naruto murmurs in her head. _Though it could just be that she doesn't like it because people don't like having their minds invaded._

 _We are ninja,_ Ino says agreeably. _Privacy is a premium._

Shikamaru's shoulders are rigid. "You can't stay out of my mind." She feels his thoughts whirl as he puts that together with everything Sakura has told him (and Ino has to be impressed at Sakura's giving Shikamaru everything she'd learned about Ino's condition--Shikamaru's not a medical nin but he's smart enough that he could do some damage if he wanted to go poking around; looking at him now, she thinks that he wants to go poking around with a vengeance) and comes up with an answer that he doesn't like at all.

"Yeah," Ino says softly, before he can say anything. "You're right."

She's dying.

He looks at her, the weight of his gaze making her stomach squirm, and asks just one question, "Why?"

He doesn't think it's worth it, Ino knows that. She also knows him well enough to know that saving the lives of the village won't be enough to make it worth it, not to him, even if he might agree that it's necessary. 

_Do you want me to handle anything?_ Naruto asks.

 _No._ Shikamaru is her teammate. She owes it to him to talk to him herself. Even if it would be easier by far to let Naruto handle it. _Watch Temari. She's got a shield over her mind that isn't of Yamanaka make._

Naruto's surprise wafts through her and his body shifts, ostensibly to support her weight better, but it puts him more in line to see what Temari is doing while looking like he's not doing just that. 

"I won't wait for you to figure out a lie," Shikamaru says, his voice lined and tight with worry. "Ino, you shouldn't even be like this."

"I chose this knowing what the risks were," she says softly. "I didn't choose this expecting to die. I'm not that stupid--"

"I don't think you are," he snaps.

"--but you know that sometimes things don't go as planned."

He does know that. "What can I do?"

"I don't want you to do anything," she says, feeling the words slice into him like a knife. None of it shows on his face, just the slightest tightening of skin around his eyes as he realizes she's serious. "I want you to be happy and to keep your distance."

Shikamaru's smile is deeply cynical. "Not going to happen," he says quietly. "You want to try that again?"

Ino's fingers curl into the fabric of her skirt. "It's got to happen," she says, just as quiet. "We can't have more people knowing what's going on. You're too vulnerable." She takes a breath that feels painful. Probably because her heart is lodged in her throat. "If you can't stay out of this, Shikamaru, I'm going to be forced to stop you."

She doesn't need to say how she'll do that. It wouldn't even be hard. Just a wipe through his mind. The information he's got isn't very old, it wouldn't be hard to get rid of. 

With enough time, she could take herself out of his memories entirely but Ino doesn't want to do that. She doesn't want to do any of it.

But she will, if she has to. That's what being a ninja means. That's what the scarlet spiral that lurks under the sleeves of her blouse means. Duty and orders have to come first, even if it kills them to do so.

"Orders?"

She can't bring herself to look away from him. "Orders," she says softly. "Yeah."

He sits back, looking displeased. "Sakura's knowledge then," he says. "What was that?"

He always was the quickest of all of them.

"Planted," Ino says. For a moment he looks hopeful and she hates herself for having to crush that hope. "It's true enough, regarding me," Ino continues, watching his face go blank. "But planted."

"Are you going to die?" he asks. "Sakura says you should be dead already."

Ino smiles faintly. "Sakura's all heart." Not that she blames Sakura for her thoughts. "Nothing is for sure but... it's the most likely outcome."

"And you're okay with that?"

Naruto's hand tightens on her elbow and she peers up at him, knowing that her answer means something to the both of them. "If I die, it will be for the village," Ino says slowly, wanting to tell the truth but also telling it in a way that will make them understand. "I can't say dying for the village is a bad thing. It's not going in my sleep with a loving husband and a legacy to leave behind but it's not bad. In theory, I don't mind it."

"Don't tell me the theory," he says. "Just tell me the truth."

"I don't mind dying," Ino tells him, watching him flinch. Naruto's grip on her elbow tightens painfully. Not enough to dispel her clone but... enough. "I don't. It doesn't mean I don't want to live though. I do. It's complicated. If I die, the reasons I'll die for satisfy me. If I live... I'll be happy. That's the only answer I've got."

From the tenor of Shikamaru's thoughts, it's not enough. She'd known that when she'd started speaking but it still distresses her. Ino wishes that it didn't.

"But you're not counting on living," he says, his voice rough.

"I can't," Ino says.

 _Ino,_ Naruto says, _just..._

 _I know. I'm sorry._ But she can't take the words back and she wouldn't anyway. They're the truth and while her life is tangled in lies and shrouded in secrecy, she's loathe to lie about herself here and now.

Shikamaru meets her eyes and she knows he wishes that Chouji was here, that he feels like he's done something wrong, if that's the way she feels about things. 

_Let me go, Naruto,_ Ino says, leaning forward. Naruto does without argument, knowing she hadn't meant for him to drop the chakra line that kept her clone going. "Hey," she says to Shikamaru, "none of this is your fault."

 _Watch Temari,_ Ino orders. _I'm going for a walk with Shikamaru._

She feels Naruto's assent even though he doesn't bother to think anything as a direct confirmation. "Let's go for a walk," she says to Shikamaru, offering him her hand.

Slowly, the shadows tangled around her legs fall away and he takes her hand, pulling her to her feet. "Yeah," he says. "All right."

The stupid little girl part of her that's never gotten over him is pleased that he doesn't look at Temari as he agrees. The rest of her knows it has nothing to do with how important or not Temari is to him but that he's reeling with the fact that she, his teammate, is dying.

Ino knows she's important to him, she always has, even if it's not the way she wished she was. (She still sort of wishes that but... life happens.)

"We'll catch up," she tosses to Naruto and then she and Shikamaru hop off the roof, down to the streets. They stroll along, she with her hands clasped behind her back and he with his hands shoved in his pockets. He's slouching and she's looking around brightly.

It's a pretty ordinary picture except for the way that they don't talk to one another.

Ino gives him time, trying hard not to listen in on his thoughts as he draws his own conclusions. They wind up on one of the minor bridges far from where they'd started. She perches on the railing, her braids trailing behind her. Shikamaru leans his arms on the rail beside her, the wind tugging at his ponytail and a pensive expression on his face.

"I hate this," he says. "Chouji should be here."

"He's not though," Ino tells him, not looking at him but rather staring out over the water. "You're not so bad at dealing with things yourself, you know."

His laugh is low, disbelieving. "Don't start lying to me now," he says. "Not more. Not to my face."

Ino makes an indistinct noise in the back of her throat. "Maybe you are," she says, tilting her head up to catch the sun. "But you've always seemed pretty good at it to me. That's not a lie."

He says nothing, though the press of his thoughts against her mind is almost painful. It would help if she'd listen but she does her best not to. 

"You don't want Chouji here, do you?" his voice is accusing. "That's why he's gone. He's not usually sent on long term missions."

"His skills are suited for the mission," Ino says automatically, the same thing she's told herself repeatedly. Under Shikamaru's steady glower, she relents. "Yeah," she says, "I didn't want him around. You, I can deal with. He gets under my skin in different ways."

"And yet you and I--?"

"There is no you and I," she tells him, hating the way her heart twists at the very words. "Not the way I wanted. I wasn't ever going to tell you."

He doesn't feel the same way--she can feel that and she hates that too. Ino doesn't, can't, blame Sakura for telling him.

But she hates that he knows. It was easier to deal with when he didn't.

"I'm glad I know," he admits.

"Why?" she asks scornfully. "So you can feel like you're all macho and shit for having two beautiful girls into you?"

He opens his mouth to say something, then shakes his head and pulls her into a hug. She lets him but doesn't hug him back. "No," he says, when he lets her go. "Not because of that. You don't believe that either. You're only saying that because you're upset and defensive."

It's the truth. Ino doesn't respond to that and just waits. Shikamaru is patient but there's few things he hates more than someone trying to outwait him. 

Eventually, he cracks. "I'm glad I know," Shikamaru says, "because it explains a few things I hadn't been able to pin down about your behaviour since Temari and I got together."

"Well, that was fun, you know," Ino says, sighing. "I know you care about her."

"I care about you too."

"I know that," she replies. "And I appreciate it. It's just... kind of a disappointment too."

He nods slowly. 

"I mean," she says, "it's not going to mess things up because," she laughs, "there's not really time left for it to be all messed up and the only way I'd even get somewhere would be a 'hey, I'm dying' plea and that's way too desperate for me. I didn't want you to know," Ino says plaintively. "You're thinking it's partly because of you and I wish you'd stop."

Shikamaru sighs. "I wish that you could stay out of my head."

"I'm trying," she snaps.

"I know," he says. "I trust you."

"You don't know if you do," she says, because the words are pounding in her face and it hurts more than she'd expected it to. "Can you not lie to me when your mind is practically shouting the truth at me?"

He turns his face away.

"Look," Ino says, "this whole thing? Yeah, I didn't want you to know. It really had very little to do with Temari-san and more to do with the fact that I just... didn't want to deal. Didn't want things to change. Then I got this mission and even if I'd said anything, it wouldn't change in the end. I'm dying Shikamaru. I'm going to be gone soon. I'm not going down without a fight but, seriously, some fights I'm not doing so hot at winning. Naruto knows," she adds, "but he doesn't want to deal with that. I think I love him more than a little too. Which isn't fair since I'm going to be gone soon."

"Stop it," Shikamaru says. "You're not." _We'll find at way,_ his thoughts add.

Ino smiles slightly. "Maybe I won't be but I can't plan for that. I can't. I know just what the odds are and I need to be able to look them in the face. If I don't make it, right here and now, I won't be satisfied. But that's why I'm still here. There's still a few things I need to do and then, if I die, I'll be okay."

"I don't want--"

"You don't want to think about it?" Ino laughs and it sounds cruel and tinny to her ears. "How do you think I feel? I haven't had a choice! And then you've been around, clueless, with Temari-san and I've been busy messing with _my best friend's mind_ and crushing her boyfriend's sanity into pieces in order to facilita--"

Her eyes narrow as she realizes that there's something her mind should be reporting but isn't.

"Ino?" Shikamaru sounds worried.

"Naruto's gone," Ino says. "I can't find him."

She keeps looking. Her mind skimming and scanning every mind she can track, filtering through shinobi and civilian alike in an attempt to find him. She can't.

"Temari?" Shikamaru asks.

Ino scans again, more slowly--Temari's mind isn't as familiar to her--and finds... "Nothing," she says, worried. "I can't find either of them."

"We're not done talking," Shikamaru says. "But let's go find them first."

She nods, searching for the chakra trail that Naruto feeds into her. It makes her blood run cold when she realizes that she can't find it. The only chakra she's got is the chakra already in this body.

"Shikamaru," she says, "I'm not going to last."

He looks at her and his eyes narrow. 

"I'm just a clone," she says, lifting her shoulders helplessly. "Naruto's been maintaining it whenever I want to go out. My chakra is tied up in the experiment."

Ino hates this. She's so vulnerable in a way that she hadn't expected.

"We'll find him," her teammate promises. "Let me know when your chakra gets low."

Slowly, she nods.


End file.
